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fcfje  itlerricb  lecture*  (or   1011-12,  QeUbereb  at 
tfje  <Dfjio  Btolepan  Wniberaitp,  flpril  21-26,  1912 


The  Increase  of  Faith 

Some  Present-Day  Aids  to  Belief 


BY 
FRANCIS  JOHN  IV/IcCONNELL 

Bishop  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  and  Ex-President 


of  DePauw  University 


NEW    YORK:    EATON    &    MAINS 
CINCINNATI:  JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
FRANCIS  J.  McCONNELL 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  MERRICK  LECTURES 5 

INTRODUCTION 7 

I.  THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 9 

II.  THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 48 

III.  SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 89 

IV.  THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 128 

V.  THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 169 

VI.  THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST.  . .  .  204 


3 
281630 


THE  MEREICK  LECTURES 

BY  the  gift  of  the  late  Frederick  Merrick, 
M.D.,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  for  fifty-one  years  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Faculty,  and  for  thirteen  of  those 
years  President  of  Ohio  Wesleyan  University, 
a  fund  was  established  providing  an  annual 
income  for  the  purpose  of  securing  lectures 
within  the  general  field  of  Experimental  and 
Practical  Religion.  The  following  courses 
have  previously  been  given  on  this  foundation : 

Daniel  Curry,  D.D. — Christian  Education. 

President  James  McCosh,  D.D.,  LL.D. — 
Tests  of  the  Various  Kinds  of  Truth. 

Bishop  Randolph  S.  Foster,  D.D.,  LL.D.— 
The  Philosophy  of  Christian  Experience. 

Professor  James  Stalker,  D.D. — The 
Preacher  and  His  Models. 

John  W.  Butler,  D.D.— Mission  Work  in 
Mexico. 

Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  D.D.,  LL.D. 
— Christ  in  the  Old  Testament. 

Bishop  James  W.  Bashford,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 

LL.D. — The  Science  of  Religion. 

5 


THE  MERRICK  LECTURES 

James  M.  Buckley,  D.D.,  LL.D.— The  Natu- 
ral and  Spiritual  Orders  and  Their  Relations. 

John  R.  Mott,  M.A.,  F.R.G.S.,  LL.D.— The 
Pastor  and  Modern  Missions. 

Bishop  Elijah  E.  Hoss,  D.D.,  LL.D.;  Pro- 
fessor Doremus  A.  Hayes,  Ph.D.,  S.T.D., 
LL.D.;  Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.D.,  LL.D.; 
Bishop  William  F.  McDowell,  D.D.,  LL.D.; 
Bishop  Edwin  H.  Hughes,  D.D.— The  New 
Age  and  Its  Creed. 

Robert  E.  Speer,  M.A.^— The  Marks  of  a 
Man;  or,  The  Essentials  of  Christian  Charac- 
ter. 

The  Rev.  Charles  Stelzle,  Miss  Jane  Ad- 
dams,  Commissioner  of  Labor  Charles  P. 
Neill,  Ph.D.,  Professor  Graham  Taylor,  and 
the  Rev.  George  P.  Eckman,  D.D.— The  So- 
cial Application  of  Religion. 

The  Rev.  George  Jackson,  M.A. — Some  Old 
Testament  Problems. 

Professor  Walter  Rauschenbusch,  D.D. — 
Christianizing  the  Social  Order. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  lectures  which  make  up  this  volume 
constitute  a  distinct  addition  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Merrick  Lecture  Course.  They 
embody  a  conception  of  religion  and  of  life 
which  is  greatly  worth  wrhile. 

The  thesis  which  Bishop  McConnell  has 
set  forth  in  his  earlier  works  on  "The  Diviner 
Immanence,"  and  "Beligious  Certainty"  re- 
appears here  in  new  and  charming  form. 
With  his  penetrative  mind  he  has  bored  into 
a  great  central  and  ruling  principle,  which 
dictates  his  message  to  our  day.  While  his 
thought  is  so  comprehensive  that  it  cannot  be 
caught  in  a  phrase,  this  governing  principle 
may  roughly  be  described  as  this — religion 
the  full  and  glad  response  of  a  complete  hu- 
manity to  a  Christian  Deity.  In  its  applica- 
tion this  principle,  of  course,  touches  the 
whole  manhood  in  all  its  potentialities,  intel- 
lectual and  moral,  aesthetic  and  social.  It 
deals  with  all  phases  of  life  and  thought  and 
presents  a  vision  of  good  times,  great  men, 

7 


INTRODUCTION 

and  a  conquering  God.  It  affords  a  sure  basis 
for  faith,  and  sets  aspiration  free. 

The  thought  is  vitalizing,  and  should  bring 
to  other  religious  teachers  and  learners  (as  it 
has  already  brought  to  many)  something  of 
the  calm  power  which  marks  the  author  him- 
self. HERBERT  WELCH. 

Delaware,  Ohio. 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

BEFORE  we  begin  a  discussion  of  the  various 
factors  in  present-day  life  which  make  for  the 
increase  of  faith  it  may  be  well  for  us  to  ask 
the  question,  What  is  faith? 

Many  answers  are  at  hand.  The  upholder 
of  creed  declares  that  faith  is  assent  to  the 
articles  of  belief.  Yet  assent  must  be  more 
than  intellectual.  Sometimes  the  fundamen- 
tal propositions  of  Christianity  are  stated  as 
if  they  were  mathematical  axioms.  Assent  to 
mathematical  axioms  does  not  require  any 
moral  virtue.  The  devils  might  well  assent 
to  intellectual  propositions.  Another  defini- 
tion would  turn  around  the  thought  that  faith 
is  the  enjoyment  of  an  inner  experience.  This 
definition  is  good  except  for  the  danger  of 
suggesting  that  the  experience  is  so  wholly  a 
matter  of  feeling  that  it  has  no  room  what- 
soever for  faith  in  the  sense  of  trust.  Still 
another  would  have  us  believe  that  faith  is  a 
keeping  of  Commandments,  which  also  is  good 

9 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

if  Commandments  are  not  conceived  of  in  a 
mechanical  or  artificial  fashion. 

All  that  is  true  in  these  definitions  can  be 
preserved,  and  all  that  is  harmful  avoided,  if 
we  say  that  Christian  faith  is  Christian  life. 
Every  activity  of  the  Christian  bases  itself 
upon  trust — trust  in  the  Christian  idea  of 
God,  trust  in  the  Christian  idea  of  man,  trust 
in  the  possibility  of  interaction  between  God 
and  man.  Out  of  such  trust  the  life  unfolds 
in  certain  practical  activities,  which  lead  to 
certain  insights,  which  culminate  in  a  general 
feeling  of  spiritual  satisfaction.  At  the  cen- 
ter of  all  is  the  will  to  do  the  will  of  God, 
and  out  of  this  comes  knowledge  which  is 
more  than  merely  intellectual,  and  experience 
which  is  more  than  the  flow  of  superficially 
emotional  states.  It  is  the  purpose  of  these 
lectures  to  show  that  various  great  factors  in 
modern  times  are  working  to  aid,  at  least  in 
a  general  way,  the  progress  of  Christian  faith. 

The  first  factor  we  are  to  discuss  is  the 
scientific  spirit  of  our  day.  It  is  part  of 
present-day  good  fortune  that  we  have  passed 
beyond  the  era  of  so-called  conflicts  between 
science  and  religion.  We  can  easily  see  how 
these  conflicts  arose.  The  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century  was  a  period  of  unparal- 

10 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

leled  scientific  advance.  The  advance  was  so 
real  and  so  unlike  anything  that  the  world 
had  ever  before  known  that  science  came 
quickly  to  an  immense  prestige.  The  glory  of 
the  actual  discoveries,  the  charm  of  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis,  the  practical  benefits  to 
be  realized  at  once  from  scientific  conquest, 
drew  more  minds  to  the  consideration  of 
scientific  problems  than  had  ever  been  drawn 
before  in  a  similar  period  of  time.  Just  think 
for  a  moment  of  the  increase  of  the  number  of 
students  of  the  sciences  since  the  date  of  the 
announcement  of  the  theory  of  natural  selec- 
tion, of  the  increase  too  of  the  means  of  scien- 
tific advance.  With  science  practically  tri- 
umphant in  sphere  after  sphere,  and  with 
students  turning  toward  science  by  hundreds, 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  first  inter- 
pretations of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new 
earth  were  in  the  direction  of  atheism.  With 
matter  apparently  doing  so  much  on  its  own 
account,  it  was  put  in  the  chief  place  with 
confident  expectation  on  the  part  of  the  new 
science  that  matter  would  soon  explain  every- 
thing. One  who  was  a  student  in  a  biological 
laboratory  in  those  days  has  told  us  that  he 
had  in  his  laboratory  what  might  be  called  a 
veritable  experience  of  materialism.  He 

11 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

watched  through  the  microscope  certain  bac- 
teriological developments.  Suddenly  the  im- 
pression seized  him  that  this  was  all — that 
the  philosophers  and  poets  and  prophets  were 
wrong,  and  that  spirit  was  nothing.  The  ex- 
perience was  as  definite  as  a  religious  con- 
version. To  instance  such  an  experience  is  to 
suggest  how  far  we  have  gone  from  the  credu- 
lous, uncritical  scientific  procedure  of  those 
early  days. 

Some  of  the  conflicts  of  those  days  came 
out  of  the  overpowering  of  the  imagination 
by  the  long  flights  of  time  which  the  scientists, 
and  especially  the  evolutionists,  felt  to  be 
necessary  for  their  theories.  True,  the  length 
of  eternity  used  to  be  a  favorite  theme  with 
old-time  preachers,  whether  to  frighten  sin- 
ners or  to  comfort  saints.  But  the  moment 
the  geologist  and  the  biologist  began  to  speak 
of  processes  running  through  millions  of  years 
the  effect  seemed  appalling  to  religious 
thought.  The  reason  now  seems  to  have  been 
not  so  much  the  conflict  with  the  biblical  reve- 
lation as  the  crude  question  as  to  where  God 
was  during  the  periods.  The  thought  that 
God  was  in  the  periods  did  not  find  ready  ac- 
ceptance. After  a  while,  though,  thoughtful 
men  began  to  see  that  the  crisis  brought  on 

12 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

by  the  evolutionary  hypothesis  was  by  no 
means  the  most  serious  through  which  Chris- 
tian belief  had  passed.  Far  more  serious  had 
been  the  announcement  and  the  acceptance  of 
the  Copernican  system.  The  acceptance  of 
the  idea  that  the  world  is  round  was  at  one 
time  a  deadly  heresy.  That  diagram  on  the 
first  page  of  the  school  geographies  to  illus- 
trate the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  the  ship  ap- 
pearing on  the  horizon  with  her  masts  first 
visible  to  the  observer  on  shore — this  is  the 
costliest  diagram  in  existence,  judging  by  the 
suffering  required  to  make  men  accept  the 
truth  it  conveyed.  But  men  not  only  ac- 
cepted the  idea  of  the  earth  as  a  globe,  but  they 
accepted  also  the  vast  distances  which  the  Co- 
pernican system  called  for  and  found  these 
not  incompatible  with  Christian  faith.  The 
late  Goldwin  Smith  used  to  urge  somewhat 
peevishly  that  dogmatic  theology  should  have 
died  with  the  announcement  of  the  Coper- 
nican theories,  that  it  would  die  sooner  or 
later  because  its  head  had  been  crushed  by 
that  announcement.  Still  theologies  of  one 
sort  or  another  live  on.  If  they  are  to  die,  it 
will  take  something  more  than  Copernicanism 
or  Darwinism  to  kill  them,  for  Christianity 
can  adjust  itself  easily  both  to  practically  in- 

13 


THE    INCREASE    OF   FAITH 

finite  stretches  of  space  and  practically  infi- 
nite stretches  of  time.  Thinkers  of  all  schools 
have  virtually  agreed  upon  this. 

Moreover,  conflicts  between  science  and  re- 
ligion have  in  our  day  been  seen  not  to  be 
conflicts  between  science  and  religion  so  much 
as  between  scientists  and  scientists  and  be- 
tween different  schools  of  religion.  It  would 
be  very  easy  to  make  quite  a  showing  of  con- 
flict between  science  and  religion  by  picking 
out  all  the  progressive  utterances  of  scien- 
tists and  by  putting  them  over  against  a  mass 
of  utterances  of  belated  theologians.  But  if 
we  were  to  take  the  utterances  of  scientists  as 
a  whole  and  the  utterances  of  theologians  as  a 
whole,  we  should  quite  likely  find  that  there 
have  been  progressive  scientists  and  progres- 
sive theologians,  conservative  scientists  and 
conservative  theologians.  Quite  as  bitter  in- 
vective has  been  heaped  upon  progressive 
scientists  by  reactionary  scientists  as  upon 
progressive  scientists  by  conservative  theo- 
logians. The  battle  is  really  between  the 
spirit  of  progress  and  the  spirit  of  conser- 
vatism. When  a  doctrine,  whether  scientific 
or  theological,  has  organized  itself  into  a 
system,  it  partakes  of  the  over-conservatism 
which  is  a  part  of  the  original  sin  of  institu- 

14 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

tions.  The  Church  is  not  the  only  institu- 
tion which  suffers  from  conservatism.  It  is 
not  fair,  taking  the  whole  Church  into  the 
account,  to  say  that  the  Church  suffers  more 
from  conservatism  than  do  the  political  or  in- 
dustrial or  educational  or  social  institutions. 
Our  modern  knowledge  of  institutions  will 
hardly  permit  us  to  speak  very  seriously  of 
conflicts  between  science  and  religion.  The 
conflict  is  really  the  age-old,  world-wide  con- 
test between  the  spirit  of  progress  and  the 
spirit  of  conservatism. 

And,  again,  certain  victories  by  scientific 
thinkers  over  some  arguments  for  Christianity 
have  not  been  victories  over  Christianity,  but 
over  these  particular  arguments.  For  ex- 
ample, much  has  been  made  of  the  practical 
surrender  by  theists  to-day  of  the  old-fashioned 
design  argument  which  had  been  thought  po- 
tent since  the  days  of  Paley.  The  more  de- 
termined of  the  earlier  apologists  would  pick 
out  some  fact,  preferably  from  the  organic 
realm,  and  would  show  that  the  evidence  of 
design  in  the  fact  pointed  to  the  existence  of 
a  Creator  working  with  a  plan  in  mind.  We 
cannot  help  feeling  that  these  old-fashioned 
arguments  still  have  a  value  that  modern 
thinkers  seem  unwilling  to  concede  to  them, 

15 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

but  there  is  a  sort  of  offensive  cocksureness 
about  them,  and  they  often  start  more  ques- 
tions than  they  answer.  When  an  ambitious 
reasoner  of  this  type  declares  that  he  can 
prove  the  existence  of  God  from  the  design 
shown  in  a  mosquito's  wing,  the  question  in- 
evitably arises  as  to  why  the  mosquito  should 
exist  at  all — which  suggests  the  difficulty 
which  arises  through  picking  out  some  one 
fact  and  looking  at  it  alone.  In  our  day  we 
feel  that  design  must  apply  to  the  system  as 
a  whole.  We  seek  for  signs  of  plan  not  so 
much  in  details  as  in  the  entire  sweep  and 
outcome  of  the  vast  cosmic  process.  This 
type  of  thinking  has  its  pitfalls  as  truly  as  the 
other,  but  it  is  in  the  fashion  just  at  present. 
In  any  case,  we  can  see  how  little  the  mere 
change  of  emphasis  in  our  argument  can 
really  affect  the  foundations  of  faith. 

To  come  closer  to  the  heart  of  our  ques- 
tion, however,  we  must  ask  not  only  whether 
this  or  that  body  of  organized  scientific  re- 
sults makes  against  faith,  but  whether  the 
scientific  temper  or  scientific  spirit  makes 
against  faith.  Through  the  positive  scientific 
advances  of  the  past  fifty  years,  through  the 
discussion  of  these  even  in  the  newspapers, 
through  the  familiarization  of  the  public  with 

16 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

scientific  processes,  there  has  come  and  does 
come  increasingly  into  our  own  life  a  scien- 
tific spirit  which  we  can  recognize  even  though 
we  may  not  be  able  to  define  it.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  this  discussion  a  formal  definition  is 
not  necessary. 

Our  first  main  proposition  is  that  there  is 
nothing  in  the  scientific  spirit  prohibitive  of 
theistic  or  Christian  belief.  We  shall  have 
something  to  say  later  of  the  decline  of  the 
dogmatic  spirit  in  theology.  We  must  say 
here  that,  remarkable  as  has  been  the  decline 
of  the  dogmatic  spirit  in  theology,  the  de- 
cline of  the  dogmatic  spirit  among  those  who 
are  looked  upon  as  the  real  leaders  of  science 
is  more  remarkable  still.  In  the  later  seven- 
ties and  early  eighties  it  was  not  so.  Scien- 
tists then  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  what 
could  not  be.  Grant  that  the  scientist  to-day 
may  so  often  say,  "I  do  not  know,"  that  he 
may  get  himself  into  a  chronic  state  of  agnos- 
ticism, still  this  scientific  agnosticism  is  better 
than  the  scientific  dogmatism  which  denies 
outright  the  value  of  religious  belief. 

Among  the  real  achievements  of  science  in 
recent  decades  none  is  of  more  real  value 
than  the  recognition  of  the  limitations  of 
science  by  every  man  of  real  scientific  spirit. 

17 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

In  fact,  there  is  question  as  to  whether  a 
student  can  lay  claim  to  the  scientific  spirit  if 
he  is  not  willing  to  recognize  the  limitations 
of  scientific  procedure.  There  is  nothing  more 
unscientific  than  to  strive  to  build  up  a  scien- 
tific orthodoxy  which  arrogates  to  itself  the 
right  to  pass  judgment  in  all  fields.  In  a 
general  way  even  popular  thinking  to-day 
recognizes  the  truth  that  it  is  the  function  of 
science  to  describe  processes  and  the  function 
of  philosophy  and  religion  to  give  them  their 
final  interpretation.  What  we  call  ultimate 
problems  lie  out  beyond  the  reach  of  technical 
scientific  processes.  Suppose  the  discoveries 
of  science  to  do  away  with  matter  as  we  think 
of  it.  Suppose  we  accept  the  modern  scien- 
tific view  that  matter  is,  after  all,  but  a  mani- 
festation of  Force  or  forces.  What  this  Force 
or  these  forces  are,  whether  personal  or  im- 
personal, and  what  the  fundamental  purpose 
of  the  Force  is  if  it  is  personal,  is  not  a  prob- 
lem on  which  the  scientist  is  finally  the  au- 
thority. 

But  science  not  only  has  certain  limitations 
in  the  nature  of  the  case.  It  also  has  limita- 
tions growing  out  of  its  own  imperfections. 
Its  instruments  are  not  yet  fine  enough  to 
make  it  the  real  authority  in  some  realms. 

18 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

Take  the  problem  of  human  immortality. 
Many  scientists  have  dogmatically  affirmed 
that  the  life  of  a  soul  after  death  is  impos- 
sible. But  how  can  a  scientist  of  real  scien- 
tific spirit  pronounce  thus  dogmatically?  The 
scientist  would  probably  answer  that  con- 
scious life  is  the  accompaniment  of  certain 
forms  of  nerve  structure,  that  the  material 
conditions  on  this  earth  are  the  only  condi- 
tions which  make  such  delicate  structures 
possible,  that  with  the  destruction  of  the  tissue 
there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  life  makes 
any  other  material  adjustment.  All  of  this, 
however,  is  assumption.  No  necessary  con- 
nection has  ever  been  shown  between  nerve 
structure  as  we  know  it  and  conscious  activity. 
On  the  one  side  is  nerve  and  on  the  other  is 
consciousness,  but  there  is  just  as  much  of  a 
chasm  between  consciousness  and  nerve  as 
there  is  between  consciousness  and  stone,  ex- 
cept that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  certain  forms  of 
consciousness  and  nerve  structure  are  found 
together.  For  the  dogmatic  scientist  this  fact 
of  being  found  together  will  be  enough,  but 
the  more  reflective  scientist  will  not  be  so 
sure.  This  latter  observer  has  learned  to  dis- 
trust the  mere  fact  of  mutual  accompaniment 
as  of  final  significance.  We  cannot  always 

19 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

judge  consciousness  by  the  company  it  keeps. 
If  we  lived  in  a  world  of  just  one  language, 
the  dogmatist  might  readily  conclude  that 
there  is  a  necessary  and  inevitable  connection 
between  the  characters  l-o-v-e  and  the  senti- 
ment which  we  know  that  these  characters  put 
together  as  a  word  express.  We  are  held  back 
from  this  dogmatic  absurdity,  however,  by  the 
fact  that  there  are  many  languages,  and  that 
while  a  sentiment  may  be  the  same  it  may  be 
expressed  in  writing  by  any  one  of  many  dif- 
ferent arbitrary  symbols.  The  connection  be- 
tween consciousness  and  matter,  as  we  know 
it,  may  likewise  be  just  one  of  many  possible 
adjustments,  or  it  is  conceivable  that  con- 
sciousness may  get  along  without  any  material 
accompaniment  whatever.  Our  universe  may 
be  penetrated  and  interpenetrated  by  other 
universes  which  the  instruments  of  our  uni- 
verse may  not  be  able  to  detect.  In  other 
words,  a  scientific  spirit  that  understands  it- 
self can  say  nothing  prohibitive  of  a  belief  in 
immortality. 

Nor  can  science  say  anything  prohibitive  of 
a  belief  in  freedom.  The  scientist  may  object 
that  the  reign  of  law  prohibits  the  belief  in 
freedom.  Every  deed  that  occurs  must  bo 
caught  up  into  the  web  of  law,  to  be  sure,  but 

20 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

there  are  laws  and  laws,  and  there  is  nothing 
which  a  truly  scientific  spirit  can  find  irra- 
tional in  the  thought  of  a  choice  between  dif- 
ferent laws.  If  virtue  is  chosen,  the  path  will 
be  upward  toward  heroism  or  saintliness.  If 
vice  is  chosen,  the  path  will  be  downward 
toward  sluggishness  and  degradation.  But 
the  struggle  uphill  and  the  rush  down  are  both 
in  accordance  with  laws.  There  is  no  way  of 
escape  from  law,  but  we  can  escape  some  laws. 
Of  course  a  man  may  break  out  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  show  scientifically  that  we  are  not 
puppets  jerked  by  unseen  wires.  But  it  is 
equally  impossible  to  prove  that  we  are.  Sci- 
ence leaves  the  door  open  to  belief  in  freedom. 
We  have  already  said  that  proof  of  the  non- 
existence  of  God  is  scientifically  out  of  the 
question.  The  scientist  comes  down  at  last  to 
forces  as  they  manifest  themselves  in  the 
world  of  space  and  time.  He  is  not,  indeed, 
able  to  say  from  a  study  of  the  forces  them- 
selves that  there  is  a  God  back  of  them,  but 
he  is  even  less  able  to  say  that  there  is  not. 
Indeed,  it  is  really  easier  to  say  that  there  is 
than  that  there  is  not — easier  to  declare  for  a 
God  whose  presence  would  account  for  the 
play  and  interplay  of  the  forces  than  to  stop 
with  the  forces  themselves. 

21 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

From  the  proposition  that  the  scientific 
spirit  is  not  prohibitive  of  belief  we  advance 
to  the  proposition  that  the  scientific  spirit  is 
largely  friendly  to  belief.  We  admit  at  the 
outset  that  we  do  not  hope  to  establish  this 
proposition  by  any  supposed  revelations  from 
any  particular  facts.  The  aid  is  largely  in- 
direct, but  really  all  the  more  potent  on  that 
account. 

We  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  scientific 
inquiry  is  more  and  more  human  in  its  pur- 
pose and  outcome.  That  is  to  say,  the  aim  is 
to  fit  the  facts  of  the  universe  more  and  more 
to  the  needs  of  the  bodies  and  minds  of  men. 
In  a  later  paragraph  we  shall  give  emphasis 
to  the  need  of  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  knowl- 
edge itself,  which  is  much  the  same  as  saying 
knowledge  for  the  sake  of  the  minds  of  men. 
Here  we  say  that  a  large  part  of  scientific  ad- 
vance has  come  from  a  desire  to  relieve  the 
pressing  physical  needs  of  men.  No  matter 
how  much  we  admire  the  pursuit  of  knowl- 
edge for  its  own  sake,  we  make  mental  reser- 
vations after  all.  We  grow  impatient  with 
the  search  for  facts  which  clearly  have  no 
human  reference.  We  may  sneer  at  the  prac- 
tical aim  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  but  we 
qualify  our  scorn  by  reference  to  the  lower 

22 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

order  of  practical.  We  do  not  wish  a  scien- 
tist to  work  with  so  practical  an  aim  as  money- 
making,  but  if  his  work  is  bacteriological  in- 
vestigation, for  example,  we  do  not  object  to 
his  being  practical  enough  to  search  for  and 
trace  out  the  life  history  of  a  deadly  disease 
germ  whose  annihilation  means  the  deliver- 
ance of  the  race  from  a  plague  rather  than  to 
track  down  a  harmless  germ  whose  life  and 
death  are  devoid  of  significance  to  human  be- 
ings. If  we  are  to  commend  scientists  for 
their  devotion  to  science,  we  are  a  little  more 
likely  to  choose  as  hero  the  man  who  died  ex- 
perimenting with  means  of  fighting  yellow 
fever  than  the  man  who  wore  himself  out  de- 
ciphering prehistoric  inscriptions. 

Apart  altogether  from  our  scientific  ideals 
on  this  point,  great  advances  to-day  are  being 
made  by  those  who  bring  the  human  purpose 
into  their  researches.  And  in  the  past  the 
aid  of  science  toward  the  growth  of  faith  has 
been  along  the  line  of  making  conditions  of 
human  life  really  human.  Full  and  rich  hu- 
man insight  is  bound  to  result  as  science 
makes  the  burdens  of  life  less  heavy.  Science, 
of  course,  makes  possible  a  materialistic  view 
of  the  universe.  But  there  is  another  mate- 
rialism— that  of  sluggish  and  inert  half-alive- 

23 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

ness,  where  the  body  is  forced  into  chief  con- 
sideration by  the  burdens  placed  upon  it. 
With  the  removal  of  these  burdens  some  men 
begin  to  think  in  wrong  channels  indeed,  but 
better  have  them  do  this  than  not  think  at  all. 
The  flourishing  of  materialism  in  times  of 
scientific  advance  is  a  flourishing  of  thought 
that  in  times  before  science  came  to  the  aid  of 
man  was  not  thought  at  all,  but  a  dull  heavy 
sense  of  pain. 

A  recent  traveler  in  China  has  told  of  the 
life  of  the  chair-bearer,  even  when  the  bearer 
has  employment  which  pays  him  as  much  as 
he  asks — the  heavy  load,  the  dull  monotony  of 
the  journey,  the  thin  garments  which  afford 
no  protection  against  the  rain,  the  utter  weari- 
ness when  the  day  closes,  the  wretched  relief 
of  the  opium  pipe.  Here  is  a  picture  of  a 
comparatively  fortunate  laborer  in  a  land 
where  science  has  not  yet  been  permitted  to 
lend  its  aid  for  the  relief  of  human  misery. 
In  such  lands  the  higher  faculties  have  practi- 
cally no  chance.  Beliefs  do  indeed  grow  in 
such  lands,  but  they  but  accentuate  the  misery 
of  the  people.  They  are  but  reflections  of  the 
low  vitality  of  the  nation.  Now,  when  it 
comes  to  estimate  the  value  of  science  for  be- 
lief we  must  not  forget  this  indirect  service  of 

24 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

aid  to  the  conditions  out  of  which  belief 
comes.  The  shortening  of  the  hours  and  the 
lightening  of  the  burden  of  labor,  the  relief  of 
communities  from  dread  of  widespread  hor- 
rors like  conflagrations  and  plagues,  the  pro- 
vision for  leisure  on  the  part  of  larger  masses 
of  men — all  this  is  a  help  to  belief. 

In  all  of  this  we  do  not  forget  the  danger 
of  the  control  over  material  things  which 
comes  with  the  advance  of  science.  Prosperity 
is  often  harder  to  endure  than  adversity.  The 
psalmist  said  of  old  that  the  people  who  had 
no  changes  forgot  God.  We  know  the  power 
of  adversity  to  lead  men  to  prayer,  and  we 
know  how  widespread  distresses  will  lead  to 
revivals  of  religion.  We  know  too  that  when 
men  lose  hope  in  earth  they  turn  toward 
heaven;  but  our  contention  holds  good  that 
unless  we  have  the  material  conditions  for  a 
human  life  we  cannot  have  a  really  human 
life,  and  that  unless  we  have  really  human  life 
belief  which,  on  the  whole,  comes  out  of  life 
at  its  brightest  and  best,  is  not  apt  greatly  to 
flourish.  We  can  readily  see  that  a  scientific 
control  of  the  earth  might  be  too  lavishly  com- 
plete for  men  at  their  present  state  of  moral 
development,  but  there  must  be  some  control. 
A  man  can  hardly  think  rightly  about  God  if 

25 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

he  has  no  leisure  to  think  at  all.  No  religious 
advance  worth  mentioning  came,  outside  the 
pastoral  and  desert  peoples  who  had  long  op- 
portunities for  brooding,  until  society  got 
enough  goods  ahead  to  secure  to  religious 
leaders  at  least  a  measure  of  freedom  from 
manual  burdens.  When  science  makes  it  pos- 
sible for  the  masses  to  have  large  leisure,  multi- 
tudes may,  indeed,  waste  their  leisure  in  idle- 
ness or  worse,  but  multitudes  of  others  will 
lay  hold  on  higher  beliefs  than  they  have  ever 
known.  Many  of  our  beliefs  to-day  still  carry 
with  them  much  of  the  hardness  of  a  bitter 
time.  The  idea  of  God  as  a  taskmaster,  the 
emphasis  on  the  virtue  of  chastening,  the  sense 
of  tragedy  in  much  religion — all  this  is  a  repe- 
tition of  days  that  were  poor  and  bitter.  The 
highest  type  of  saintliness  is  not  that  which 
can  get  along  without  material  things,  but 
that  which  can  control  and  rightly  use  ma- 
terial things.  Sweet  indeed  are  the  uses  of 
adversity,  but  the  uses  of  prosperity  are 
sweeter  still.  The  meek  are  to  inherit  the 
earth  and  the  saints  are  to  judge  the  world. 
Modern  science  is  to  help  the  meek  to  their 
throne  and  the  saints  to  their  judgment  seat. 
If  the  meek  can  remain  meek  when  they  come 
to  their  inheritance,  and  the  saints  can  re- 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

main  saintly  while  seated  on  a  throne  of  judg- 
ment, the  triumph  of  grace  will  be  complete, 
and  out  of  the  triumph  of  grace  will  come  a 
vision  of  the  truth  which  will  be  complete. 
In  a  large  sense  science  prepares  the  way  for 
faith. 

We  return  now  for  a  moment  to  the  con- 
ception of  science  as  a  system  of  knowledge 
on  its  own  account.  Not  only  has  science 
made  a  way  for  faith  in  its  utilization  and 
control  of  material  forces,  but  the  habits  of 
mind,  the  intellectual  temper  and  outlook, 
which  are  part  of  the  scientific  spirit,  have 
been  an  aid  to  faith.  The  scientists  have 
moved  through  the  fields  of  belief  with  keen 
blades  cutting  down  the  weeds.  In  any  realm 
which  has  to  do  with  religious  belief  it  is  very 
easy  for  the  mind  to  run  off  into  superstition ; 
and  while  superstition  comes  often  out  of  the 
religious  side  of  our  nature,  superstition  is  the 
foe  of  religion.  William  James  used  to  say 
that  the  best  way  to  deal  with  superstitions 
is  to  ventilate  them,  to  break  them  open 
and  let  the  northwest  wind  of  science  roar 
through  them.  So  the  northwest  wind  of 
science  has  actually  blown  away  ghosts  and 
goblins  and  witches  and  demons  which  used 
to  infest  the  realm  of  religious  thinking. 

27 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

Understand  now,  this  has  not  been  achieved 
by  the  discovery  of  this  or  that  scientific  fact. 
Quite  an  argument  might  be  made  out  for  all 
these  ghost  folk,  but  the  scientific  temper 
brushes  the  argument  aside.  Let  us  not  for- 
get this  when  we  are  tempted  to  cry  out 
against  the  scientific  spirit  as  a  despoiler  in 
the  realm  of  religious  feeling.  Undoubtedly 
that  spirit  may  be  a  despoiler.  We  have  only 
to  notice  some  of  the  wild  things  done  in  edu- 
cational realms  to  see  what  can  happen  if  an 
overzealous  scientific  spirit  gets  out  of  its  own 
realm — the  dissection  of  a  great  literary 
classic,  for  example,  from  the  standpoint  of 
minute  philological  technicalities  which  miss 
the  spirit  of  the  author.  But  while  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  laboratory  may  sometimes  prove 
poisonous  in  the  library  or  the  studio  or  the 
cloister,  still  that  atmosphere  is  more  deadly 
to  hobgoblins  than  it  is  to  angels.  Unless  we 
have  large  familiarity  with  the  thought  of 
earlier  ages  we  cannot  imagine  how  fortunate 
we  are  in  being  free  from  blighting  supersti- 
tion in  religion. 

Moreover,  there  are  other  types  of  supersti- 
tion which  the  scientific  spirit  does  much  to 
banish.  Men  accept  inaccurate  and  inade- 
quate generalizations  which  get  themselves  ex- 

28 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

pressed  in  wise  saws  and  which  are  then  al- 
most worshiped  as  a  part  of  a  sort  of  ortho- 
doxy. To  take  one  or  two  simple  illustrations 
of  no  particular  moral  application,  think  of 
the  old-fashioned  fear  of  night  air,  especially 
in  sick-rooms.  Or,  in  another  realm,  that 
old  saw,  "Slow  but  sure."  When  it  occurs  to 
some  statistical  investigator  to  examine  thou- 
sands of  cases  of  "slow"  people  he  finds  that 
they  are  not  at  all  likely  to  be  sure,  nor  does 
he  find  that  the  "sure"  persons  are  likely  to 
be  slow.  In  religious  thinking  we  have  ac- 
cepted misunderstandings  of  the  laws  of  he- 
redity, mighty  as  those  laws  are,  until  they 
have  become  veritable  superstitions.  Simi- 
larly with  notions  about  depravity,  or  about 
the  possibility  of  saying  that  men  and  things 
are  either  in  one  religious  class  or  another. 
This  "either-or"  superstition  is  very  preva- 
lent. When  men  set  themselves  to  look  at  the 
actual  facts  of  this  world  in  a  scientific  spirit 
they  find  both  men  and  things  to  be  pretty 
much  "both-and" — pretty  well  mixed  and 
tangled  and  complicated;  so  that  hasty  gen- 
eralizations, even  if  they  have  the  dignity  of 
long  tradition  behind  them  and  enjoy  the 
attractiveness  of  epigrammatic  form,  may  be 
nothing  but  superstitions  after  all.  The 

29 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

matter-of-factness  of  the  scientific  spirit  is 
sometimes  too  matter-of-fact,  but,  after  all, 
we  live  in  a  world  of  matters-of-fact.  So  long 
as  we  live  in  this  sort  of  world  it  is  well  to 
approach  matters-of-fact  in  a  matter-of-fact 
spirit.  A  large  part  of  the  religious  life  is  of 
this  matter-of-fact  nature.  Science  aids  us 
here  in  a  right  approach. 

Of  still  further  value  for  the  increase  of 
faith  has  been  the  scientific  emphasis  upon 
system  and  law.  The  late  Francis  A.  Walker 
used  to  speak  of  certain  psychological  by- 
products of  modern  commercial  institutions 
as  of  nearly  equal  value  with  the  direct  out- 
put of  the  institutions.  He  used  to  speak  of 
a  bank  as  a  manufactory  of  punctuality,  of 
great  importance  to  multitudes  of  men  in 
holding  before  them  unescapable  obligations 
which  must  be  met  at  particular  times.  The 
bank  does  away  with  the  old  loose  verbal 
agreement  to  be  fulfilled  any  time  more  or 
less  near  another  time,  and  also  makes  even 
the  written  instrument  more  binding.  This 
educational  effect  is  of  immense  value  to  the 
community.  Now,  it  would  simply  be  impos- 
sible to  estimate  the  influence  for  good  of  the 
ideas  of  system  and  law  as  these  are  enforced 
by  modern  science.  We  all  know  the  damag- 

30 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

ing  effect  which  is  wrought  by  the  conception 
of  law  when  that  binds  down  the  mind  by  iron 
regulations.  We  know  how  easily  the  system 
may  become  hostile  to  religion,  but  it  is  of 
vast  value  to  have  the  ideas  of  law  and  system 
held  before  the  minds  of  men.  Modern  science 
is  not  the  only  force  which  has  worked  in  this 
direction,  and  the  later  scientific  emphasis  is 
not  more  marked  than  the  emphasis  of  the 
early  scientists;  but  in  our  time  the  sheer 
abundance  of  the  emphasis  has  become  a  com- 
pelling factor.  Law  has  been  familiar  to  men 
from  the  dawn  of  civilization,  and  there  were 
worthy  scientists  in  the  earliest  days,  but  the 
stress  on  law  and  system  has  never  before 
been  made  so  much  a  part  of  the  common  con- 
sciousness as  now.  On  the  whole,  this  is  for 
good.  It  introduces  system  and  regularity 
into  belief.  If  belief  is  to  be  worth  while,  it 
must  be  sane,  and  the  emphasis  on  the  great 
regularities  makes  for  sanity.  In  these  ad- 
dresses it  must  be  remembered  that  by  the  in- 
crease of  faith  we  mean  the  increase  of  faith 
which  is  really  worth  while,  not  the  rank 
abundance  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  be- 
liefs. 

All   this,    however,    is   somewhat   indirect. 
Science  has  been  of  direct  aid  to  faith  in  plac- 

31 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

ing  in  the  hands  of  faith  the  scientific  method 
which  can  be  used  mightily  in  religious  effort. 
Just  as  religion  uses  the  material  instruments 
of  modern  civilization  as  an  aid  in  building 
her  church  edifices,  just  as  she  uses  the  instru- 
ments of  medicine  and  surgery  to  carry  on  her 
works  of  relief,  just  as  she  uses  printing 
presses  and  express  trains  to  send  the  gospel 
over  the  world,  just  so  she  uses  the  instru- 
ments of  the  scientific  method  to  approach 
anew  the  facts  which  are  the  center  of  the 
Christian  system.  Truly  scientific  method, 
as  illustrated  in  the  hands  of  the  great  mas- 
ters, is  a  wonderful  tool,  even  more  wonderful 
than  any  material  tool  which  has  come  of 
scientific  study.  The  patience  which  can  ex- 
amine huge  heaps  of  details  and  sort  them 
into  order,  the  self-control  which  can  suspend 
judgment  until  an  adequate  conclusion  ap- 
pears, the  discernment  which  can  sift  out  es- 
sentials from  nonessentials,  the  intuition 
which  can  finally  seize  and  state  a  law — this, 
which  in  part  describes  the  scientific  method 
of  our  day,  is  a  valuable  instrument  in  the  aid 
of  faith.  To  refer  again  to  a  fact  mentioned  a 
moment  ago,  the  Church  appropriates  more 
and  more  the  appliances  of  modern  physical 
and  industrial  and  social  relief  for  the  bring- 

32 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

ing  in  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  She  shows  an 
increasing  willingness  to  listen  to  scientific 
scrutiny  of  her  own  claims  and  her  own  faults. 
She  is  willing  more  and  more,  if  we  are  to 
judge  by  the  utterances  of  many  of  her  leaders, 
to  surrender  claims  of  artificial  authority  of 
one  sort  or  another  if  she  can  have  the  power 
that  comes  from  righteous  influence. 

Again,  the  Church  shows  more  and  more 
willingness  to  allow  the  Scriptures  to  be  sub- 
jected to  the  test  of  the  scrutiny  of  the  scien- 
tific method,  or,  rather,  she  seems  more  and 
more  willing  to  accept  the  results  of  such 
study.  We  trust  that  we  do  not  err  from  the 
way  of  strict  truth  when  we  voice  our  opinion 
that  whatever  harm  has  come  through  the 
scientific  handling  of  the  Scriptures  has  come, 
not  from  those  who  have  been  too  scientific, 
but,  rather,  from  those  who  have  not  been 
enough  scientific.  Dogmatism  is  not  scien- 
tific. Too  often  the  approach  of  the  theologian 
toward  the  Bible  has  been  with  the  announced 
predetermination  that  certain  teachings  must 
be  found  there.  Too  often  the  approach  of  the 
scientific  critic  has  been  with  the  predetermi- 
nation that  these  teachings  must  not  be  found 
there.  Of  course  all  thinking  must  have  its 
assumptions  and  presuppositions,  but  it  is  not 

33 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

the  part  of  the  scientific  spirit  to  blind  the 
eyes  to  facts  for  the  sake  of  the  presupposi- 
tions. 

At  the  hands  of  men  of  true  scientific  spirit 
the  Scriptures  have  been  made  new  in  our  day 
with  effects  like  that  which  must  have  at- 
tended their  translation  out  of  dead  language 
into  living  language.  The  fact  that  the  Scrip- 
tures were  written  in  a  prescientific  age  does 
not  prevent  our  getting  great  good  from  look- 
ing at  them  through  the  scientific  atmosphere. 
Thus  viewed  they  have  become  new.  Parts  of 
Scripture  once  enigmatic  have  become  clear; 
parts  misplaced  have  found  their  true  setting, 
and  the  foundations  have  been  laid  on  a  firmer 
basis.  Even  very  radical  New  Testament 
study  has  found  a  basis  for  claim  that  some 
portions  of  New  Testament  writing  go  back 
much  further  toward  the  times  of  Christ  than 
we  had  previously  supposed,  and  radical  study 
in  its  attempt  to  separate  the  Jesus  of  history 
from  the  Christ  of  faith  has  failed  to  come 
upon  a  time  when  the  Christian  writers  did 
not  view  Christ  essentially  as  we  view  him  to- 
day. Looking  at  the  facts  of  religious  history 
as  facts  their  significance  becomes  more  and 
more  important.  The  fact  of  the  Scriptures 
and  their  influence,  the  fact  of  Christ  and  his 

34 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

power,  the  fact  of  prayer  and  its  effects  for 
good,  whether  we  call  these  effects  reflex  or 
not — all  these  come  to  new  thrones  when  we 
approach  them  in  the  scientific  spirit. 

We  have  said  that  in  the  scientific  spirit  of 
our  time  there  is  nothing  hostile  to  a  proper 
religious  spirit  and  that  in  many  ways  there 
is  aid  to  religion  in  the  scientific  spirit.  It 
remains  for  us  to  say  that  even  where  the  facts 
of  the  world  seem  darkest  for  the  spirit  of 
faith  the  scientific  spirit  furnishes  a  challenge 
and  an  incentive  to  the  religious  spirit^  For  the 
scientific  spirit  is  also  a  spirit  of  faith.  Science 
proceeds  upon  the  most  daring  assumptions. 
We  may  not  call  the  faiths  of  science  faiths : 
we  call  them  hypotheses;  but  hypothesis  is  a 
form  of  faith.  If  we  were  to  write  an  eleventh 
chapter  of  Hebrews  for  men  of  science,  it 
would  have  to  be  a  chronicle  of  the  mighty 
deeds  made  possible  through  the  spirit  of  faith. 
The  scientist  does  not  win  his  victories  by 
going  into  a  laboratory  and  by  staring.  He 
is  animated  by  a  mighty  belief,  and  in  that 
belief  seeks  for  light.  Columbus  sailed  west  in 
obedience  to  a  theory,  and  his  quest  was  one  of 
faith.  There  is  a  splendid  daring  about  such 
faith  to-day.  Whether  it  be  in  the  assumption 
that  by  invention  we  can  navigate  the  air,  or 

35 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

in  the  assumption  that  we  can  drive  tubercu- 
losis out  of  the  world,  or  in  the  assumption 
that  we  can  find  out  whether  there  are  Mar- 
tians or  not,  the  daring  is  the  daring  of  faith. 
There  is  a  faith  of  science,  even  more  truly 
than  there  is  a  science  of  faith. 

It  will  be  observed  that  we  have  nowhere 
picked  out  any  facts  which  specifically  make 
for  belief.  We  have  been  speaking  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit  and  the  scientific  temper.  We  now 
admit  the  existence  of  many  facts  which  at 
first  seem  irreconcilable  with  belief.  We  in- 
sist, however,  that  the  approach  of  religion  to 
these  facts  should  be  with  the  same  daring  as 
that  with  which  the  scientific  spirit  approaches 
them.  For  example,  it  is  said  that  the  very 
size  of  the  universe  is  against  the  spirit  of 
faith,  that  it  may  have  been  well  enough  to 
believe  in  the  fundamentals  of  Christianity 
back  in  the  days  when  this  earth  was  con- 
ceived of  as  the  center  of  the  physical  system. 
To-day  science  has  shown  that  the  earth  is  so 
small  as  to  be  of  little  account  in  a  solar 
system  in  which  it  is  a  mere  fragment.  It 
was  all  well  enough  to  believe  in  Christianity 
at  a  time  when  men  did  not  think  that  man 
had  been  on  the  earth  more  than  a  few  thou- 
sand years.  But  since  Copernicanism  and 

36 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

Darwinism  how  changed  from  all  this!    How 
can  Christianity  survive  the  changes? 

One  reassuring  feature  about  scientific  dis- 
covery is  that,  no  matter  how  big  the  universe 
is,  and  no  matter  how  long  it  has  been  run- 
ning, it  seems  to  be  composed  throughout  of 
the  same  elements  that  we  find  in  our  world. 
If  a  chemist  could  be  transported  from  the 
earth  to  the  sun,  and  could  live  there,  he  would 
not  have  to  unlearn  much  of  the  earthly  chem- 
istry. The  same  elements  that  we  know  here 
are  in  existence  there.  If  the  geologist  could 
go  back  to  the  ages  before  man,  he  would  find 
the  same  forces  at  work  which  we  find  at  work 
to-day.  Air  and  water  and  heat  working 
through  long  periods  have  wrought  the  great 
changes.  If  he  could  go  back  and  live  in  the 
carboniferous  era,  he  would  probably  find  the 
situation  there  just  what  he  might  have  ex- 
pected before  starting.  Now,  these  common 
everyday  forces  take  on  a  new  dignity  when 
they  are  given  field  and  time  in  which  to  act. 
Running  water  is  not  great  taken  on  a  few 
feet  of  river  bed  and  for  a  few  seconds  of  time, 
but  give  room  enough  and  time  enough,  and  a 
Grand  Canyon  is  the  result.  It  really  re- 
quired some  effort  for  science  to  see  the  im- 
portance of  these  everyday  forces,  and  belief 

37 


THE    INCREASE    OF   FAITH 

in  their  power  was  at  first  an  act  of  faith.  En- 
larging conceptions  of  religious  life  act  simi- 
larly for  Christian  belief.  They  give  the  com- 
mon forces  space  and  time  through  which  to 
act.  Of  course  the  larger  world  presents  a 
larger  challenge  to  Christian  faith  than  does 
a  smaller ;  but  is  faith  to  be  outdone  by  science 
in  the  boldness  of  its  conceptions?  If  science 
can  believe  that  comparatively  insignificant 
forces  around  us  can  be  the  shaping  tools  of 
the  planets,  why  cannot  faith  believe  that  the 
hopes  and  prayers  of  men  are  of  vast  spiritual 
significance?  The  very  fact  that  man's  abode 
is  not  the  center  of  the  universe  makes,  of 
course,  a  larger  challenge  to  faith.  Dare  we 
believe  that  spiritual  forces  manifested  in  an 
out-of-the-way  planet  are  the  key  to  the  under- 
lying forces  of  the  universe?  Dare  we  believe 
that  righteousness  and  love  wherever  found 
are  above  all  things  else?  Shall  we  be  im- 
posed upon  by  the  mere  bigness  and  age  of 
things?  The  larger  universe  which  science 
reveals  thus  challenges  us.  The  spirit  of 
really  scientific  inquiry  challenges  us  not  to 
be  lacking  in  a  spirit  of  faith.  Both  science 
and  religion  must  rely  upon  faith. 

A  still  more  perplexed  doubter  points  out 
our  helplessness  in  the  presence  of  the  great 

38 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

fixities  of  nature.  After  all,  how  can  we  be 
sure  that  anything  was  made  for  our  benefit? 
Some  things  in  the  world  are  usable  by  us,  but 
what  is  there  to  assure  us  that  these  things 
were  made  for  us?  The  stones  were  made  by 
the  slow  geologic  processes.  We  pave  our 
streets  or  build  our  homes  with  them.  It 
seems  a  little  absurd  to  say  that  these  stones 
were  designed  for  us.  We  found  the  stones 
here  and  we  used  them.  Similarly  with  the 
control  of  the  forces  of  nature.  We  can  direct 
the  current  a  little,  but  we  cannot  radically 
change  its  course.  We  can  control  others  and 
ourselves  only  by  studying  the  streams  of  our 
lives,  by  immersing  ourselves  in  them,  and  by 
slightly  deflecting  the  flow  here  and  there 
while  swimming  with  the  stream.  Or,  to 
change  the  figure,  we  are  like  children  in 
whose  hands  the  reins  which  guide  the  steed 
have  fallen  for  a  few  blissful  seconds,  and 
even  in  our  bliss  we  suspect  that  this  privilege 
is  allowed  us  because  the  horse  can  be  trusted 
to  go  aright  for  at  least  a  few  rods. 

We  are  perfectly  willing  to  admit  all  this, 
perfectly  willing  to  allow  the  argument  to  be 
stated  even  more  strongly.  It  does  look 
absurd  to  say  that  the  physical  universe  was 
made  just  for  us.  It  may  have  other  uses  than 

39 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

just  those  which  suit  us.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  we  can  use  the  universe,  and  use  it 
to  good  advantage.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we 
shall  use  it  to  the  full  for  our  purposes,  no 
matter  what  the  absurdities  in  our  assump- 
tion of  our  own  importance.  If  there  is  any 
fact  of  the  universe  worth  knowing,  the  scien- 
tist assumes  the  right  to  know  that  fact.  If 
the  universe  can  be  put  to  any  sort  of  use  for 
human  beings,  we  assume  that  it  is  the  human 
beings,  and  not  the  material  universe,  which 
have  the  right  of  way.  The  great  fixities  of 
nature  remain  fixed,  to  be  sure,  but  that  not 
because  we  recognize  in  them  especial  sacred- 
ness.  Just  so  far  as  we  can  we  will  change 
them,  if  we  can  do  so  to  better  human  inter- 
ests. The  old  type  of  piety  which  detected  an 
irreverent  spirit  in  changing  the  course  of 
streams,  or  in  controlling  electricity  as  in- 
terfering with  the  works  of  God,  is  dead  and 
gone.  We  admit  that  we  are  powerless  in  the 
presence  of  some  facts,  but  we  are  not  power- 
less to  protest  against  the  facts.  That  old 
scoffer  who  said  that  if  he  had  been  present 
when  the  human  eye  was  created  he  might 
have  made  some  valuable  suggestions  may 
have  been  blasphemous  in  spirit;  but  men  who 
are  not  blasphemous  Actually  do  make  im- 

-40 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

provements  in  eyes.  What  we  are  insisting 
upon,  however,  is  not  our  success  in  dealing 
with  nature,  for  that  is  little  enough.  We  do 
insist  upon  the  significance  of  the  daring  as- 
sumption that  underlies  our  battle  with  na- 
ture. Let  the  world  be  thought  of  as  ever  so 
big.  The  magnificent  distances  may  seem  to 
correct  and  chasten  the  spirit  of  faith  both  in 
science  and  religion,  but  the  discovery  of  any 
new  world  is  a  mighty  "dare"  both  to  science 
and  religion.  Science  responds  with  the  as- 
sumption that  the  new  facts  can  be  fitted  into 
our  system  of  knowledge,  and  religion  re- 
sponds with  the  assumption  that  the  new 
facts  can  be  made  serviceable  to  belief. 
The  spirit  of  faith  both  in  its  scientific  and  its 
religious  aspect  survives  and  increases  as  new 
problems  are  set  by  the  unfolding  of  the  uni- 
verse. 

But  think  of  the  limitations  of  our  knowl- 
edge! Think  of  the  insoluble  problems! 
Well,  suppose  we  do  think  of  them.  We  find 
them  hard  enough.  Every  increase  of  knowl- 
edge is,  as  of  old,  an  increase  of  sorrow,  but, 
after  all,  the  sorrow  is  not  the  sorrow  of  those 
who  have  no  hope.  We  repeat  that  bad  as  are 
the  facts  of  the  physical  universe,  they  are 
not  prohibitive  of  faith;  rather  are  they  a 

41 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

challenge  and  an  appeal  to  faith.  Insoluble 
though  they  may  be  to  us,  they  are  not  neces- 
sarily insoluble  to  a  higher  intelligence,  or  to 
our  own  intelligence  under  more  enlightened 
circumstances.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  noth- 
ing inherently  self-contradictory  or  self-evi- 
dently  absurd  in  these  facts,  hard  as  they  are. 
Are  we  distressed  by  the  vast  immensities  of 
the  universe  and  by  their  apparent  meaning- 
lessness?  On  earth  the  wastes  of  desert  and 
water  and  ice !  Throughout  space  the  blazing 
suns  and  dead  moons !  We  admit  that  we  do 
not  understand,  but  is  that  a  sign  that  these 
facts  are  beyond  the  reach  of  all  intelligence? 
Are  they  such  contradictions  as  the  prop- 
osition that  things  which  are  equal  to  the 
same  thing  are  not  equal  to  each  other? 
Admittedly  we  do  not  understand,  but  con- 
ceivably we  may  understand.  The  problem 
is  not  clearly  beyond  the  reach  of  all  intelli- 
gence. 

Or  are  we  distressed  by  the  fact  of  physical 
pain  in  the  world?  Even  before  we  come  to 
man  there  is  pain  enough.  How  can  we  recon- 
cile the  presence  of  animal  suffering  with  the 
assumption  that  God  is  good?  If  there  were 
to  be  some  moral  outcome  of  animal  suffer- 
ing, the  situation  might  be  different;  but,  tak- 

42 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

ing  animal  life  just  as  we  see  it,  the  problem  is 
rather  dark. 

The  problem  is  rather  dark ;  but  let  us  not 
make  it  darker  than  it  is.  Above  all  let  us 
strive  to  avoid  the  error  of  thinking  that  the 
animals  suffer  as  we  would  suffer  if  we  were 
in  the  place  of  the  animals.  The  tender 
mercies  of  nature  are  no  doubt  cruel  enough, 
but  animals  are  not  men,  after  all.  If  we 
could  abstract  from  our  pain  all  that  the 
power  of  looking  before  and  after  puts  into 
it,  and  could  divest  pain  of  all  the  terrors  that 
many  times  come  writh  our  understanding  of 
its  deadly  significance,  the  pain  itself  might 
be  notably  diminished,  though  a  toothache, 
for  example,  would  still  be  its  own  wretched 
self.  Still,  let  us  make  the  fact  of  animal 
suffering  as  dreadful  as  we  can.  Let  nature, 
red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  ravin,  shriek  ever 
so  loudly  against  our  creed.  If  the  creed  is  at 
all  vital,  it  can  hope  on  in  spite  of  the  shrieks. 

The  problem  of  human  suffering — apart 
from  the  problem  of  moral  evil,  which  does 
not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  lecture — is 
likewise  not  an  insuperable  barrier  to  faith. 
Here,  again,  we  must  be  careful  not  to  make 
the  problem  worse  than  it  is.  A  favorite  de- 
vice of  pessimists  is  to  imagine  a  sort  of  lump 

43 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

sum  of  human  woe  constantly  added  to  by  the 
sufferings  of  man  until  it  reaches  one  awful 
total.  The  total  of  human  sufferings  from  the 
beginning  is,  indeed,  awful  enough,  but  this 
lump  sum  is  a  fiction  of  the  imagination. 
There  has  been  much  sickness  from  the  begin- 
ning, but,  on  the  whole,  as  a  shrewd  observer 
has  said,  "the  race  has  been  in  tolerable 
health."  In  spite  of  inequalities  of  social 
order  pain  gets  pretty  well  distributed.  Then 
there  might  be  an  increase  of  pain  which 
would  be  a  sign  and  result  of  material  prog- 
ress. It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  great 
losses  in  the  human  race  are  due  to  deaths  in 
infancy.  Suppose  now,  that  science  finds 
methods  of  increasing  the  chances  of  a  child's 
living,  so  that  for  two  who  now  die  in  infancy 
one  would  under  the  new  order  survive  to  ma- 
turity. Evidently,  the  survivor  must  die  at 
maturity  or  beyond.  This  means,  statistically, 
an  increase  in  deaths  from  disorders  of  adult 
life,  and  might  be  made  to  seem  very  terrify- 
ing on  paper.  Again,  in  such  case  the  death 
in  maturity,  because  of  the  full  development 
of  consciousness  and  the  possibility  of  looking 
ahead,  and  because  too  of  the  more  numerous 
lines  of  connection  with  other  human  beings, 
would  probably  cause  more  conscious  suffer- 

44 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

ing  to  the  person  himself  and  to  others  than 
would  have  been  possible  if  the  person  had 
died  in  infancy.  Yet  we  are  not  willing  to 
have  the  work  of  the  diminution  of  infant 
mortality  stop  on  this  account. 

We  have  no  desire  to  make  the  problem  of 
human  suffering  less  than  it  really  is.  The 
fact  that  most  of  the  people  that  have  lived 
up  to  the  present  time  have  had  no  properly 
human  existence,  the  probable  fact  that  most 
of  the  persons  on  the  face  of  the  earth  now 
have  gone  to  sleep  in  the  last  twenty-four 
hours  hungry,  the  fact  of  unspeakable  hard- 
ship in  the  lot  of  individuals  everywhere — all 
these  are  indeed  facts.  They  are  facts  which 
throw  many  good  people  out  of  sympathy  with 
the  universe.  Many  look  upon  the  universe  as 
one  long  tragedy.  They  cannot  find  any  clue 
to  the  meanings  of  nature  or  any  insight  into 
her  moods. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  this  faith  lives 
on.  Belief  undertakes  one  explanation  after 
another  and  all  alike  fall  short.  In  spite  of 
the  shortcomings  of  the  explanations  belief 
survives.  Looking  at  the  fact  of  faith  in  a 
scientific  spirit,  we  must  ask  for  some  reason 
for  the  persistence  of  the  faith.  Of  course 
the  Christian  will  answer  that  it  is  God  him- 

45 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

self  who  is  prompting  men  to  believe  in  him  in 
spite  of  all  temptations  to  the  contrary.  Our 
problem  just  now,  however,  is  not  as  to  the 
doctrine  that  God  works,  but  as  to  how  he 
works  through  the  modern  scientific  spirit. 
Our  answer  is  that  the  modern  scientific  spirit 
furnishes  neither  the  glare  of  the  noonday  or 
the  deep  darkness  of  the  midnight.  It  is, 
rather,  a  twilight  atmosphere  and,  no  matter 
how  far  it  goes,  it  must  always  be  twilight. 
Where  everything  is  sun-clear  and  admitted 
fact  there  is  not  faith,  as  we  understand  faith. 
Where  there  is  dense  darkness  there  cannot  be 
faith.  For  a  race  whose  beliefs  are  to  come 
out  of  a  moral  venture  we  must  not  know  too 
much  and  we  must  not  know  too  little.  So 
we  say  that  the  modern  scientific  atmosphere 
does  not  prohibit  belief.  It  in  a  measure 
aids  belief,  but  it  does  not  compel  belief.  It 
puts  the  facts  of  the  universe  before  us  in 
such  a  way  that  they  make  appeal  to  faith  as 
to  an  heroic  quality  in  men.  Some  day,  it 
may  be,  we  shall  have  the  full  light;  but  who- 
ever or  whatever  has  that  full  light,  science 
has  it  not.  Science  moves  in  twilight.  But 
in  a  measure  she  furnishes  men  with  tools  and 
a  spirit  to  move  on  in  the  twilight.  And  the 
twilight  gives  us  light  enough  to  take  the  next 

46 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 

step.  As  moral  beings  under  human  condi- 
tions that  is  all  we  need.  What  the  moral  re- 
sponsibilities of  angels  or  other  celestial  in- 
telligences may  be  in  the  blaze  of  the  full  light 
there  is  no  call  for  us  to  consider.  Our  busi- 
ness is  not  with  angels,  but  with  men  striving 
by  moral  endeavor  to  find  God.  For  men  we 
may  express  a  confidence  that  this  world  of 
twilight  furnishes  the  challenge  and  the  test 
by  which  faith  shows  its  heroic  quality  and 
by  which  it  grows  from  more  to  more.  For 
some  purposes  twilight  is  better  than  noon- 
day. 


47 


II 

THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

A  FAMILIAR  characterization  of  the  progress 
of  human  history  would  have  us  believe  that 
progress  is  never  forward  along  a  plane  or 
straight  up  an  incline,  but  that  it  is,  rather, 
through  the  upward  windings  of  a  spiral  with 
the  gaze  downward  upon  old  and  familiar 
facts  seen  ever  from  newer  and  higher  alti- 
tudes. This  characterization  has  especial 
force  as  applied  to  the  history  of  philosophy. 
The  charge  is  often  made  that  philosophy  is 
but  a  threshing  of  the  same  old  straw,  or  a 
manipulation  of  the  same  old  puzzles.  The 
figure  of  the  spiral  is  much  truer.  The  prob- 
lems are,  indeed,  the  same  old  problems,  be- 
cause the  problems  are  the  great  fundamentals 
of  human  experience.  These  problems  are 
forever  being  seen,  however,  from  a  loftier 
height  and  in  a  wider  circle. 

Within  the  memory  of  persons  not  yet  past 
middle  life  the  study  of  philosophy  has  made 
practically  a  complete  turn  in  its  spiral  as- 

48 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

cent.  The  problems  of  matter,  of  mind,  of 
personality,  of  truth  are  to-day  viewed  from 
a  standpoint  more  favorable  to  faith  than 
they  were  twenty-five  years  ago. 

It  is  commonly  said  to-day  that  materialism 
is  no  longer  a  living  force  in  philosophy.  This 
would  seem  to  be  an  overstatement.  Material- 
ism of  the  old  fashion,  with  matter,  force,  and 
motion  as  they  were  conceived  of  in  the  early 
seventies,  is  not  in  vogue,  but  materialism 
which,  while  recognizing  mind,  nevertheless 
puts  material  processes  so  completely  in  the 
first  place  as  to  make  mind  dependent  on 
matter,  is  still  a  factor  to  be  reckoned  with. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  sympathies 
of  agnosticism  to-day  are  very  close  to  essen- 
tial materialism.  To  be  sure,  the  agnostic  re- 
sents the  title  "materialist,"  but  too  often 
agnosticism,  apparently  well  meant  and  sin- 
cere, is  a  cover  from  which  materialism 
emerges  for  a  sort  of  guerrilla  warfare  and  to 
which  it  retreats  when  at  all  seriously  pur- 
sued. At  least  we  may  say  that  the  camp  of 
the  agnostic  does  not  hold  many  believers  in 
the  primacy  of  the  mind.  A  mind  which  be- 
lieves in  its  own  primacy  will  not  long  profess 
agnosticism. 

In  discussing  the  passage  away  from  the 

49 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

emphasis  on  the  older,  more  outspoken  mate- 
rialism we  must  not  forget  the  great  lasting 
benefit  which  came  from  that  discussion.  In 
that  discussion  the  theory  of  evolution  as  an 
ascent  by  natural  processes  took  more  and 
more  hold  of  the  thinking  of  the  time,  all  types 
of  mind  and  all  realms  of  study  feeling  its 
power.  The  theory  was  more  than  scientific 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term.  It  became  a 
full  philosophy  with  application  to  all  phases 
of  thinking.  Now,  any  theory  of  ascent 
through  struggle  fits  in  so  naturally  with  the 
spirit  of  aggressive  Christianity,  and  this 
theory  was  so  attractive,  that,  in  spite  of  the 
avowed  materialism  of  many  of  its  first  ad- 
herents, evolution  was  seized  upon  as  express- 
ing an  essentially  Christian  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse. Considered  simply  as  historic  fact,  the 
theory  of  evolution,  at  least  in  those  stages  in 
which  Christian  thinking  had  become  at  all 
adjusted  to  it,  must  be  looked  upon  as  one  of 
the  real  forces  making  for  an  increase  of  faith. 
Even  when  we  come  to  look  at  the  theory  of 
ascent  through  natural  processes  from  the 
more  critical  standpoint  of  the  present  day  we 
find  much  in  it  that  lends  comfort  to  belief. 
In  the  previous  lecture  we  tried  to  show  how 
chary  we  must  be  in  professing  to  find  direct 

50 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

revelations  from  any  realm  of  nature,  but, 
nevertheless,  the  thought  of  natural  processes 
as  moving  in  accordance  with  a  law  which 
sweeps  them  upward  is  in  accordance  with  a 
theistic  and  Christian  view  of  the  world.  Ad- 
mitting that  there  is  to-day  no  substantial 
agreement  in  the  schools  of  the  evolutionists 
upon  a  satisfactory  definition  of  evolution,  ad- 
mitting that  there  is  some  disagreement  as  to 
the  relative  importance  of  the  various  factors 
at  work,  admitting  also  that  there  is  am- 
biguity in  the  use  of  the  terminology  of  the 
evolutionists,  as,  for  example,  the  oscillation 
back  and  forth  between  the  survival  of  the  fit 
as  the  survival  of  the  merely  fit  to  survive  and 
the  survival  of  the  ethically  fit,  admitting  that 
many  facts  which  make  against  the  theory  are 
ignored  or  slurred  over,  still  the  truth  remains 
that  the  present-day  emphasis  on  upward 
movement  described  in  evolutionary  terms  is 
a  help  to  the  view  of  the  universe  which  faith 
holds. 

On  the  whole,  too,  the  advance  which  has 
come  out  of  the  discussion  of  the  evolutionary 
philosophy  has  been  on  the  side  of  faith.  The 
old-fashioned  materialism  which  saw  in  the 
evolutionary  processes  merely  the  play  and 
interplay  of  material  factors  with  mental  proc- 

51 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

esses  as  the  shadowy  and  powerless  accom- 
paniment of  the  material  processes  had,  some- 
how, to  meet  the  objection  that,  after  all, 
the  evolutionary  theory  itself  is,  on  such  a 
hypothesis,  a  shadowy  attendant  of  no  vital 
significance.  It  had  to  meet  the  objection  that 
it  is  mind  which  has  discovered  and  read  off 
the  process.  If  the  most  significant  philo- 
sophical theory  culminates  in  the  contention 
as  to  the  powerlessness  of  mind,  the  fact  must 
remain  that  mind  has  been  powerful  enough 
to  discover  its  own  powerlessness. 

This,  however,  the  thoroughgoing  material- 
ist would  reject  as  a  quibble,  though  on  his 
theory  even  quibbles  must  point  to  some  fact 
in  the  physical  system.  An  objection  that  the 
materialistic  evolutionist  could  not  wave  aside 
was  the  objection  out  of  which  came  the  dis- 
tinction generally  recognized  to-day  between 
evolution  as  a  description  of  processes  and 
evolution  as  a  theory  of  causes.  In  the  former 
evolution  may  be  just  the  method  by  which 
Creative  Intelligence  proceeds.  In  the  latter 
we  have  Evolution  capitalized  and  going  of 
itself,  the  real  factors,  of  course,  being  ma- 
terialistic. Then  we  have  the  puzzle  as  to  how 
that  which  is  only  matter  can  ever  evolve  into 
anything  else  than  matter.  If  we  start  with 

§2 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

matter,  we  must  end  with  matter  unless  some- 
thing is  introduced  along  the  line.  Of  course 
the  impotence  of  the  theory  of  materialistic 
evolution  in  this  respect  was  clear  to  discern- 
ing students  from  the  outset,  but  to-day  there 
is  pretty  widespread  recognition  of  the  weak- 
ness. The  distance  between  such  a  work  as 
Bergson's  Creative  Evolution  and  the  early 
statements  of  evolutionary  theory  is  clear  at 
a  glance;  but,  apart  from  the  utterances  of 
philosophers  like  Bergson,  evolutionary  the- 
ory which  denies  power  to  mind  is  offensive 
in  a  day  which  lays  great  stress  on  intellectual 
force,  especially  on  that  high  form  of  intellec- 
tual force  which  we  call  administrative  ability. 
In  the  practical  life  of  to-day  administrative 
skill  is  so  rare  as  to  win  the  highest  prizes. 
The  power  to  make  things  come  together  so  as 
to  reach  any  sort  of  right  outcome  is  just  the 
power  which  the  man  on  the  street  feels  must 
be  put  into  an  evolutionary  process  to  get 
from  it  anything  worth  while.  The  ordinary 
man  feels  that  if  things  are  left  to  themselves, 
they  fall  to  pieces  or  run  downhill.  Now, 
this  language  is  fairly  insolent  to  the  philo- 
sophical materialist,  but  it  does  express  an 
objection  which  comes  naturally  to  the  sur- 
face when  we  see  the  infinitely  complex 

53 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

threads  of  the  universe  so  managed  as  to  come 
to  a  measurably  intelligible  result. 

How  serious  a  problem  this  is  for  the 
philosophical  materialist  appears  also  from 
the  fact  of  his  insistence  upon  certain  simplici- 
ties like  cells  and  molecules  and  atoms  and 
ions  as  the  fundamental  facts  of  the  universe. 
If  these  are  the  fundamentals,  all  that  we  see 
is  arrangement.  Now,  even  though  we  abjure 
altogether  the  old-and-fast  design  arguments, 
we  cannot  get  away  from  the  suggestions  of 
mental  activity  in  the  presence  of  arrange- 
ment. If  it  is  urged  that  the  arrangement  is, 
after  all,  only  in  the  mind,  and  is  really  illu- 
sion, we  have  to  ask  if  the  physical  universe  is 
such  that  its  processes  bring  forth  illusions. 
If  the  reply  is  that  the  illusion  is  born  of 
mind,  the  reflection  arises  that  mind  must  be 
rather  powerful  to  beget  such  an  illusion  as 
that  cells  are  arranged  into  plants  and  ani- 
mals. 

It  is  really  on  this  question  of  mind  that 
all  theories  of  materialism  go  to  pieces.  The 
recognition  of  the  activity  of  mind  is  another 
of  those  great  recognitions  which  make  for 
faith.  Materialists  of  all  sorts  have  aban- 
doned the  crude  notion  that  the  brain  secretes 
thought.  In  their  emphasis  upon  mental  proc- 

54 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

esses  as  the  accompaniment  of  physical  proc- 
esses the  materialists  are  unable  to  make  the 
connection  more  than  coincidence.  Their 
statement  cannot  provide  a  theory  of  knowl- 
edge. We  cannot  have  a  real  theory  of  knowl- 
edge until  we  reach  some  provision  for 
activity  of  consciousness.  We  have  no  desire 
to  quarrel  about  terms.  Whether  we  call  the 
activity  that  of  a  soul,  or  a  self,  or  a  conscious- 
ness, or  a  stream  of  consciousness,  we  can 
have  knowledge  only  as  an  agent  of  some  sort 
reads  off  a  meaning  or  builds  up  a  picture. 
Suppose  we  were  to  hold  that  the  outside 
world  is  reported  to  the  mind  by  being  photo- 
graphed there.  A  photograph  is  in  itself  a 
creation  in  space  with  every  point  lying  out- 
side of  every  other  point.  It  becomes  a 
photograph  only  as  a  mind  sees  it,  and  the 
mind  sees  by  building  up  the  picture  through 
a  mental  process  of  incredible  activity  and 
subtlety. 

And  this  begins  to  lead  us  off  toward  a  dis- 
cussion of  idealism  as  one  of  the  contributing 
factors  making  for  faith.  Before  we  enter 
upon  this  phase  of  the  discussion,  however, 
we  call  attention  to  the  truth  that  the  empha- 
sis upon  evolution  and  naturalistic  processes 
makes  an  atmosphere  in  which  the  old  sub- 

55 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

jective  idealism  does  not  thrive.  Whether  the 
universe  lies  outside  of  all  thought  or  not, 
we  are  certainly  most  in  harmony  with  the  in- 
tellectual temper  of  to-day  in  insisting  that 
the  universe  has  its  reality  outside  of  our 
thought  in  the  sense  that  we  did  not  create  it. 
The  student  of  the  evolutionary  process  is  not 
likely  to  allow  himself  to  be  persuaded  that 
the  process  is  a  process  simply  in  his  own 
mind.  To  say  that  the  universe  is  grounded 
in  thought  is  one  thing.  To  say  that  it  is 
grounded  in  our  thought  is  quite  another.  It 
is  this  latter  conception  that  is  hardly  likely 
to  thrive  in  the  mind  of  one  who  knows  geol- 
ogy and  biology  and  bacteriology.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  favorable  atmosphere  which  the 
discussion  of  evolution  has  begotten  for  faith, 
we  must  see  in  the  stubborn  facts  of  material- 
ism a  correction  for  faith.  No  one  can  tell 
what  absurdity  the  spirit  of  faith  might  foster 
to-day  if  the  barrier  of  a  great  objective  order 
were  not  in  the  way. 

As  we  have  indicated,  we  need  not  pay 
much  attention  to  subjective  idealism.  Still, 
there  is  a  current  form  of  idealism  which  is 
of  mighty  meaning.  It  starts  from  the  fact 
which  we  have  mentioned  above — the  consti- 
tutive activity  of  the  mind  in  knowing.  When 

56 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

one  has  really  seen  this  another  truth  dawns 
upon  one,  namely,  that  nothing  which  mind 
cannot  seize  can  ever  be  known.  To  be  seized 
by  mind  the  object  must  be  penetrated  by  re- 
lationships which  reach  the  inmost  essence; 
that  is  to  say,  the  object  must  be  constituted 
throughout  by  thought.  Here  is  the  great  con- 
tribution of  idealism  to  the  spirit  of  faith. 
Nothing  knoicable  can  exist  save  as  the  ex- 
pression of  intelligence.  Here  is  the  very 
heart  of  the  modern  argument  for  theism. 
Things  must  either  come  within  thought  or  go 
out  of  existence.  Any  sort  of  hard-and-fast 
stuff  apart  from  thought  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. To  affirm  that  any  such  sort  of  stuff 
exists  is  to  bring  it  within  thought  relation- 
ships. So  far  as  our  minds  are  concerned,  it 
would  be  too  great  a  strain  on  a  theory  to 
make  us,  finite  intelligences,  responsible  for 
the  creation  of  the  thought  system  in  the  midst 
of  which  we  live.  But  we  cannot  understand 
the  world  until  we  affirm  that  whoever  laid  its 
foundations  laid  them  in  thought.  A  knowa- 
ble  universe  is  one  of  the  great  supports  of 
theism. 

No  sooner,  however,  had  philosophy  fixed 
on  the  constitutive  processes  of  the  mind  as 
essential  than  it  forgot  the  individual  minds 

67 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

whose  activities  had  furnished  a  clue  to  the 
problem  and  began  to  speak  of  thought  itself 
as  the  controlling  force.  The  philosophers 
did  not  say  "Thinkers"  or  "Thinker";  they 
said  "Thought."  Thought,  at  least  by  impli- 
cation impersonal,  was  the  great  source  and 
center  of  all  things.  The  study  of  the  move- 
ment away  from  this  position,  like  the  study 
of  the  movement  away  from  the  early  state- 
ments of  naturalism,  is  full  of  instruction. 
The  contribution  of  this  idealism  to  theistic 
thinking  is,  in  all  likelihood,  an  immortal  one, 
but  the  clarifications  which  have  come  with 
the  effective  criticism  of  the  system  as  a 
system  are  hardly  less  important.  The  ideal- 
ist of  the  type  we  are  now  considering  thought 
of  the  universe  as  the  unfolding  of  a  system  of 
logical  implications.  In  the  Hegelian  lan- 
guage the  movement  was  thesis,  as  when  an 
affirmation  is  made,  antithesis,  as  when  the 
contradictory  is  developed,  synthesis,  as  when 
a  ground  of  reconciliation  is  reached  between 
a  proposition  and  its  contradictory.  The  uni- 
verse is  here  conceived  of  as  an  evolution  in 
logic.  The  evolution  as  set  forth  by  the  Hege- 
lian school  was  profoundly  impressive,  as  im- 
pressive in  its  way  as  the  materialistic  evolu- 
tion of  the  early  Darwinians.  At  one  point 

58 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

the  same  criticism  is  to  be  passed  upon  the 
Hegelian  evolution  as  was  passed  upon  ma- 
terialistic evolution.  In  both  systems  it  was 
impossible  on  the  basis  of  the  system  itself  to 
get  more  out  of  the  system  than  the  adherents 
started  with.  If  matter  is  all,  there  is  no  use 
searching  for  anything  but  matter  in  the  out- 
come. If  impersonal  thought  is  all,  imper- 
sonal thought  is  the  outcome.  In  any  strict 
logical  procedure  we  cannot  get  more  into  the 
conclusion  than  there  is  in  the  premises.  If 
the  universe  is  the  expression  of  the  thought 
of  a  Living  Mind,  we  can  see  how  the  evolu- 
tionary process  moves  from  lower  to  higher — 
it  moves  as  new  factors  are  continuously  in- 
troduced. If  the  universe  is  the  expression  of 
a  Living  Mind  moving  according  to  logic,  that 
Mind  must  move  as  ours  do  to  get  anything 
like  progress — it  must  introduce  factors  which 
are  really  outside  of  and  above  the  strict  logi- 
cal chain.  Acute  thinkers  have  maintained 
that  even  in  the  strictest  mathematical  reason- 
ing there  is  this  introduction  of  factors  from 
without  the  strict  line  of  reasoning.  But  ideal- 
ism which  turns  around  impersonalism  is  not 
entitled  to  put  anything  but  strict  logic  in, 
and  therefore  can  get  nothing  out  but  the 
premises  with  which  the  reasoning  began.  For 

59 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

religious  purposes  there  is  not  much  choice  be- 
tween impersonal  matter  and  impersonal 
reason. 

A  further  difficulty  with  the  idealistic 
systems  of  the  impersonal  type  is  that  there 
is  really  no  way  of  getting  any  movement  into 
them.  We  speak,  indeed,  of  logical  move- 
ments, but  the  movement  is  not  in  the  logic. 
Logic  does  not  move.  Something  else  moves 
according  to  logic.  Logic  is  simply  the 
statement  of  the  rule  of  procedure.  We  can 
see  how  this  illusion  arises.  In  the  world 
around  us  events  do  seem  to  progress  accord- 
ing to  an  inner  logic.  We  speak  of  the  logic 
of  a  movement  or  of  a  situation.  We  say  that 
the  logic  of  the  case  forbids  a  man  or  a  cause 
to  stop  at  a  particular  place.  There  is  a  logi- 
cal necessity  for  going  on.  Or  the  expression 
of  a  proposition  by  one  party  does  make  neces- 
sary the  expression  of  the  contrary  by  the 
opposition,  and  the  conflict  between  the  two 
must  finally  be  reconciled.  But  in  all  of  this 
the  movement  is  not  in  any  system  of  imper- 
sonal logic.  The  movement  is  in  men  and  in 
events.  Sooner  or  later  this  is  apt  to  dawn  on 
the  believer  in  impersonal  idealism,  and  then 
he  feels  prone  to  dismiss  the  world  of  move- 
ment as  appearance,  perhaps  as  illusion.  The 

60 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

final  reality  becomes  the  universe  of  fixed 
logical  relationships.  This  universe,  on  the 
impersonalist  theory,  is  not  the  vision  before 
the  eyes  of  a  living  God  whose  mental  life  is 
forever  at  the  full.  It  is  not  a  beatific  vision 
which  might  be  worth  while  for  religious  re- 
flection. It  is  impersonal — a  framework  from 
which  everything  of  living  significance  has 
been  left  out.  We  do  not  even  have  a  "ballet 
of  bloodless  categories."  The  categories  are 
indeed  bloodless  enough,  but  there  is  no  pro- 
vision for  the  movement  of  a  ballet.  In  spite 
of  what  we  have  said  about  the  logic  by  which 
men  and  events  often  seem  to  move,  we  must 
now  say  that  this  movement  is  not  possible  to 
pure  logic  after  all.  Life  comes  first  and  logic 
afterward,  with  the  driving  power  in  life. 
Now,  however  it  may  be  with  the  highly  de- 
veloped logical  tastes  of  the  strict  intellec- 
tualist,  the  practical  exclusion  of  the  world 
of  movement  from  life  as  appearance  or  illu- 
sion is  not  a  result  especially  satisfactory 
from  the  religious  point  of  view. 

A  further  objection  to  impersonal  idealism 
is  its  inability  to  furnish  any  sort  of  ground 
for  moral  distinctions.  The  idealist  would  in- 
sist most  strenuously  that  logical  necessity  is 
stronger  even  than  the  physical  necessity  of 

61 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

materialism.  But  while  there  might  con- 
ceivably be  inequalities  of  pressure  in  a  sys- 
tem of  mechanical  stresses  and  strains  there 
can  hardly  be  such  inequalities  in  logical  ne- 
cessity. There  the  necessity  is  distributed  over 
all  parts  alike.  In  a  necessity  of  this  sort 
there  is  no  justification  for  words  like  "free- 
dom" and  "good"  and  "bad"  in  the  moral 
sense.  All  things  that  are,  are :  that  is  the  be- 
ginning and  the  end.  Good,  bad,  and  indif- 
ferent are  morally  all  alike.  All  we  can  say 
is  that  the  feeling  for  the  good  in  us  is  part  of 
the  logical  system,  that  the  feeling  toward  the 
bad  is  produced  by  the  same  system,  that  the 
conflict  between  the  two  is  produced  by  the 
underlying  logic,  that  the  "give-and-take"  of 
all  conflicts  is  the  expression  of  logical  neces- 
sity. The  emphasis  on  the  reconciliation  in 
the  final  synthesis  does  not  help  much.  The 
question  is  as  to  how  the  differences  ever 
started.  Moreover,  reconciliation  morally 
takes  place  as  each  side  is  willing  to  give  up 
something  in  concession.  Whither  in  such 
case  do  the  dropped-out  elements  of  the  con- 
troversy go?  If  they  are  aliens,  how  did  they 
ever  get  in?  The  way  to  get  around  all  such 
questions  is,  of  course,  to  ignore  them.  Under- 
stand, now,  we  are  not  discussing  these  ques- 

62 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

tions  primarily  with  a  philosophic  motive. 
We  are  interested  chiefly  in  religious  values, 
and  we  have  to  record  our  feeling  that  there 
is  not  much  aid  and  comfort  for  religion  in  a 
theory  which  by  logical  necessity  puts  all 
moral  conceptions  on  the  same  plane. 

By  this  time  the  purely  verbal  character  of 
impersonal  idealism  ought  to  be  clear  to  us. 
The  reconciliations  of  contradictions  are 
largely  verbal.  Everything  is  pasted  together 
under  one  term  like  the  "Absolute"  or  "All." 
Of  course  nothing  is  done  to  things  themselves 
in  thus  giving  them  a  name.  By  the  way,  it 
is  worth  while  remembering  that  much  of  the 
skepticism  of  religious  fundamentals  which  has 
come  out  of  the  Hegelian  camp  is  really  verbal. 
How  can  the  absolute  ever  take  up  relations 
to  the  purely  relative?  How  can  the  infinite 
come  into  contact  with  the  finite  without  ceas- 
ing to  be  infinite?  All  this  is  empty.  Re- 
ligion is  not  concerned  to  maintain  an  Abso- 
lute of  this  purely  verbal  nature.  The  passion 
for  unity  is  entirely  intelligible  in  its  aim  and 
purpose,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  how  so  imperious 
a  passion  can  be  satisfied  with  so  meager  an 
outcome  as  throwing  all  things  together  and 
calling  them  "All."  And  while  the  way  to- 
ward this  abstraction  is  easy  enough,  the  way 

63 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

back  is  sorely  beset.  We  can  get  an  "All"  by 
calling  all  things  all,  but  even  with  the  most 
potent  logic  it  is  not  possible  to  deduce  the 
world  of  concrete  things  as  we  see  them  by 
looking  upon  the  All.  Admitting  that  every- 
thing in  the  conclusion  must  be  in  the  prem- 
ises, and  stocking  these  premises  with  all 
the  possibilities  of  the  concrete  world,  we  find 
ourselves  unable  to  deduce  a  single  concrete 
item  from  our  philosophy.  We  are  told  that 
logic  reigns  in  all  things,  but  we  cannot  de- 
duce a  single  thing.  And  taking  the  world  of 
things  inductively,  we  cannot  tell  why  any- 
thing is  after  we  find  it.  We  cannot  tell  why 
any  particular  thing  should  be  as  it  is  and  not 
otherwise.  All  this  would  not  distress  us  so 
much  if  we  were  admittedly  living  in  a  world 
where  logic  played  but  little  part;  but  in  a 
world  where  logic  is  professedly  everything  it 
is  embarrassing  not  to  be  able  to  make  more 
use  of  logic. 

Among  the  most  concrete  facts  in  our  con- 
crete world  is  the  individual  person.  Just 
how  to  get  this  world  of  persons  out  of  a 
system  of  impersonal  thought  is  a  hopeless 
puzzle.  By  what  processes  of  thesis,  antith- 
esis, and  synthesis  can  we  make  the  in- 
dividuals whom  we  know  fit  into  a  system? 

64 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

The  last  thing  we  can  do  with  the  men 
and  women  and  children  whom  we  know 
is  to  deduce  them.  If  logic  is  lame  in 
trying  to  deduce  a  material  universe,  what 
can  we  say  of  it  in  connection  with  a  universe 
of  persons?  The  fact  is  that  in  all  utterances 
about  persons  as  deductions  or  specifications 
or  generalizations  of  impersonal  thought  the 
thinker  has  his  reasonings  curiously  reversed. 
Thinkers  are  really  first  and  thoughts  are 
second.  But  some  thought  was  in  the  uni- 
verse before  we  in  particular  arrived,  and 
hence  it  is  easy  for  the  mind  to  hide  behind  its 
own  product,  spelling  Thought  with  a  capital 
and  making  the  thinker  the  product  of 
Thought.  Of  course  no  thinker  would  be 
guilty  of  saying  that  he  himself  is  the  product 
of  his  own  thinking,  but  it  is  easy  for  anyone 
to  think  of  himself  as  the  product  of  Thought 
which  antedated  himself — thence  the  conclu- 
sion becomes  possible  that  Thought  antedates 
all  thinkers. 

Some  suspicion  of  the  difficulty  at  this 
point  seems  to  haunt  the  theories  of  all  abso- 
lute idealists.  The  only  meeting  of  the  diffi- 
culty, however,  is  no  meeting  at  all,  but, 
rather,  an  avoidance  of  it.  An  ambiguous 
term  like  "Reason"  is  used.  At  one  moment 

65 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

Reason  is  impersonal  thought.  At  another 
moment  Reason  is  a  Reasoner.  At  one  mo- 
ment Intelligence  is  impersonal  thought.  At 
another  it  is  an  active  mind.  Some  idealists 
come  out  openly  with  the  avowal  that  they  do 
not  believe  in  absolute  idealism  as  an  imper- 
sonal system  of  thought.  They  believe  in 
Eternal  Consciousness  which  wells  up  in  in- 
dividuals. All  men  are  parts  of  the  Eternal 
Consciousness.  Persons  melt  and  fuse  into 
one  another  or,  rather,  into  an  all-embracing 
Consciousness.  This  view  has  two  considera- 
tions in  its  favor.  First  is  the  historic  fact 
of  the  persistence  of  the  view  itself.  It  has 
probably  been  held  over  wider  reaches  of  space 
and  time  than  any  other  serious  philosophical 
construction  of  the  universe,  not  in  the  Hege- 
lian form  indeed,  but  in  various  forms  which 
show  Oriental  or  semi-Oriental  influences. 
Second,  there  is  something  in  some  phases  of 
conscious  experience  which  seems  to  support 
the  conception.  In  moments  of  surpassing 
friendship  it  is  possible  for  one  heart  to  enter 
into  such  sympathy  with  another  that  two 
personalities  seem  at  least  for  the  instant  to 
be  fused.  Or  in  transports  of  feeling  which 
sweep  over  men  in  groups  the  individual  seems 
lost  in  the  mob,  or  crowd,  or  group,  or  national 

66 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

consciousness.  This  suggests  the  possibility 
of  like  emotional  approach  to  an  Eternal  Con- 
sciousness above  and  including  what  we  look 
upon  as  finite  consciousness. 

But  the  philosophical  objections  come  back 
with  even  greater  vigor,  especially  the  problem 
of  evil.  It  is  bad  enough  if  all  the  evils  in  the 
world  are  deductions  or  specifications  of  our 
impersonal  system  of  thought.  It  is  worse, 
for  religious  values  at  least,  if  individual  sin- 
ners are  parts  of  an  Eternal  Consciousness. 
The  desire  of  the  sinner  for  his  sin  and  his 
joy  in  his  sin  are  not  merely  reflections  of  a 
desire  and  joy  on  the  part  of  the  Eternal  Con- 
sciousness :  they  are  directly  and  immediately 
the  desire  and  joy  of  the  Eternal  Conscious- 
ness. The  Eternal  Consciousness  is  Eternal 
Saint  and  Eternal  Sinner  in  one.  Then  there 
is  the  difficulty  of  getting  the  individual  con- 
sciousness as  we  know  it  into  any  sort  of  re- 
lation to  the  Eternal  Consciousness.  The  mis- 
leading expression  "Stream  of  Consciousness" 
has  played  a  harmful  influence  here.  Streams 
can  be  diverted  from  the  main  channel  and 
can  be  run  through  sluiceways  even  down  to 
capillary  proportions.  But  consciousness  is 
not  a  stream,  except  by  figure  of  speech.  It  is 
an  active  and  indivisible  unity.  Suppose  we 

67 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

drop  the  word  "consciousness"  and  ask  as  to 
the  possibility  of  so  dealing  with  a  man  as  to 
run  him  off  into  sluiceways  which  become 
other  men!  If  we  think  of  the  Eternal  Con- 
sciousness as  a  Creative  Will  we  can  say  that 
the  finite  men  are  creations  of  that  will,  but 
one  will  cannot  be  part  of  another  will. 

And  so  we  are  back  again  to  the  finite  wills 
which  make  up  the  world  of  persons.  The 
mind  refuses  to  yield  to  materialism  on  the 
one  hand  or  to  absolute  idealism  on  the  other. 
The  way  out  is  through  personalism,  the  recog- 
nition of  the  living  individualities  around  us 
as  the  points  from  which  our  thinking  must 
start.  We  find  ourselves  in  communication 
with  other  minds,  and  as  we  reflect  upon  the 
possibility  of  such  communication  we  see 
clearly  that  the  communication  must  have 
come  about  through  the  possibility  of  using 
the  world  as  an  instrument  and  medium  for 
the  communication  of  thought.  But  the 
world  clearly  is  independent  of  our  thinking. 
Back  of  it  there  must  be  a  Thinker  greater 
than  ourselves.  In  attributing  personality  to 
the  Cause  of  the  universe  we  do  not  mean  per- 
sonality with  the  limitations  of  human  con- 
ditions. We  seize  upon  personality  as  the 
very  highest  power  we  know,  and  think  of 

68 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

the  Cause  of  all  things  in  terms  of  personal 
life. 

The  objection  to  the  personality  of  God 
once  took  the  form  of  emphasis  upon  the  limi- 
tations of  personality,  whereas  God  must  be 
thought  of  as  the  absolute  and  unlimited. 
Much  of  the  discussion  on  the  point  was  pure- 
ly verbal,  but  the  point  itself  seemed  to  be 
valid.  To-day  there  is  a  rather  strongly 
marked  protest  against  such  absolutism  in  the 
thought  of  God.  A  God  who  is  infinite  in  the 
sense  that  he  is  above  all  relations  to  the 
finite,  absolute  in  the  sense  that  he  cannot 
touch  the  relative,  eternal  in  the  sense  that 
all  that  happens  in  time  is  illusion  for  him, 
is  not  a  God  of  the  highest  value  religiously. 

Two  attempts  to  deliver  the  Power  back  of 
all  things  from  the  emptiness  of  absolutism 
are  worthy  of  note.  Professor  William  James 
gave  the  last  years  of  his  life  to  the  doctrine 
of  a  finite  God.  It  is  fairly  difficult  to  make 
much  of  a  system  out  of  anything  that  James 
did.  James's  whole  soul  seemed  to  be  in  a 
state  of  chronic  revolt  against  any  suggestion 
of  system.  At  one  time  he  seemed  to  be  sym- 
pathetic with  the  philosophy  of  Mill  and  Bain 
and  Spencer.  At  another  he  lent  direct  aid 
and  encouragement  to  the  most  orthodox  Chris- 

69 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

tianity.  In  a  private  letter  to  a  friend  he  de- 
clared that  in  his  belief  of  the  reality  of  the 
play  of  spiritual  forces  upon  the  individual 
life  he  could  out-Methodist  the  Methodists. 
It  is  clear  that  while  James  would  have  scru- 
ples over  such  a  term  as  "theist"  he  was, 
nevertheless,  a  believer  in  God.  But  for  him 
God  is  a  limited  person  among  other  persons. 
James  carried  belief  in  pluralism  to  great 
lengths.  He  saw  no  objection  to  believing 
that  the  individual  finite  soul  will  exist  for- 
ever, and  quite  likely  would  have  been  willing 
to  hold  a  belief  that  the  individual  souls  have 
existed  forever.  Among  these  lives,  or  streams 
of  consciousness,  God  is  the  greatest.  Just 
how  to  provide  for  unity  in  such  a  scheme 
James  would  not  have  cared.  Quite  likely  he 
would  have  been  willing  to  hold  that  time  and 
space  are  a  vast  theater  on  which  God  and 
angels  and  men  play  their  several  parts.  In 
all  this  James  would  have  said  that  he  was 
serving  religious  interests — that  he  was  con- 
tending not  for  a  barren  abstraction  but  for 
the  living  God,  the  God  of  Abraham  and  Isaac 
and  Jacob.  The  philosophical  objections  to 
the  theory  are  apparent  at  a  glance.  But  the 
religious  value  is  by  no  means  slight.  James 
would  bring  God  within  reach,  even  though 

70 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

he  had  to  resort  to  dubious  theological  expe- 
dients to  accomplish  the  result. 

The  other  attempt  is  by  Bergson.  Berg- 
son's  interest  does  not  seem  to  be  especially 
religious.  For  God  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
the  word  he  would  have  no  place  at  all.  But 
he  does  speak  of  God  as  Life,  Freedom,  Move- 
ment unfolding  in  new  and  altogether  unpre- 
dictable manifestations.  Life  is  spelled  with 
a  capital  and  is  responsible  for  the  forward 
push  which  means  progress.  There  is  all  the 
difference  in  the  world  between  evolution  as 
conceived  of  by  Bergson  and  evolution  as  con- 
ceived of  by  the  Spencerians.  Spencerianism, 
and  even  Darwinism,  for  that  matter,  is  no- 
where subjected  to  more  searching  criticism 
than  in  Bergson's  Creative  Evolution.  Life 
is  conceived  of  after  the  analogy  of  conscious- 
ness to  such  an  extent  that  matter  itself  seems 
at  times  to  be  a  product  of  consciousness.  Yet 
consciousness  is  not  the  formal  intellectual 
life  as  we  know  it.  We  can  hardly  tell  just 
what  Bergson  conceives  consciousness  to  be, 
but  his  suggestions  point  to  intuition  and  feel- 
ing as  nearer  the  heart  of  reality  than  is  the 
speculative  intellect.  Bergson  overlooks  the 
truth  that  the  concrete  facts  with  which  we 
have  to  do  are  just  the  individual  lives.  He 

71 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

throws  a  blanket-term,  "Life,"  over  all  these. 
There  is  no  way  of  getting  from  "Life"  to 
lives.  There  is  no  attempt  at  answering  the 
score  of  questions  that  crowd  upon  us  when 
we  try  to  come  to  close  quarters  with  the  sys- 
tem. But  Bergson's  view  does  have  this  great 
virtue — it  is  alive  and  it  does  provide  for  a 
real  struggle  with  a  growing  reality.  What- 
ever God  Bergson  would  admit  at  all  is  him- 
self in  the  movement.  God  is  himself  move- 
ment and  struggle  and  development.  Just 
where  Bergson  would  find  anything  to  stand 
across  the  flow  of  life  and  measure  the  flow,  or 
even  discern  the  flow,  is  nowhere  told  us,  but 
the  impression  Bergson  produces  is  whole- 
some. We  are  in  the  presence  of  real  forces 
engaged  in  real  movement.  Whatever  God 
there  is,  is  not  afar  off  in  the  heavens,  but  is 
here  now.  God  is  not  satisfactory  from  the 
standpoint  of  speculative  intellect,  but  the 
speculative  intellect  is  not  itself  satisfac- 
tory. The  deep  life-needs  must  be  satisfied. 
If  we  are  willing  to  put  the  critical  under- 
standing to  one  side  and  resolve  not  to  ask 
questions,  there  is  much  in  Bergson's  book 
that  is  stimulating  and  even  bracing.  His  God 
too,  if  he  has  one,  is  a  God  of  the  living. 
But  works  like  those  of  James  and  Bergson 

72 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

have  their  chief  value  as  protests,  and  as  pro- 
tests their  value  is  great.  It  is  the  conviction 
of  the  present  writer  that  religious  thinking 
has  suffered  harm  from  the  systematic  theo- 
logians who  have  laid  such  stress  on  the  meta- 
physical perfections  of  God  that  his  value  as 
an  object  to  be  sought  for  worship  and  com- 
panionship has  been  seriously  impaired.  To 
take  a  single  illustration,  the  establishment 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  ideality  of  time  is  a  great 
philosophical  achievement.  It  is  to  be  doubted 
whether  in  the  history  of  philosophy  there  has 
been  more  profound  reasoning  than  that  which 
has  gone  to  show  that  time  is  essentially  a 
mental  form  under  which  the  mind  works, 
that  a  man's  present  is  in  a  sense  equivalent 
to  the  range  of  his  mental  activity,  that  with 
the  Supreme  Intelligence  there  may  be  a  grasp 
which  makes  all  things  present.  Now,  while 
this  doctrine  is  clear  enough  to  the  metaphy- 
sician, it  may  be  so  stated  as  to  harm  religious 
life.  It  may  be  so  interpreted  as  to  mean  that 
with  God  everything  of  life  and  movement  is 
of  slight  consequence.  Or  it  may  be  taken  to 
mean  that  with  God  everything  is  jumbled 
.into  a  confused  happening  together.  The 
most  serious  result,  however,  is  that  which 
would  make  change  mean  nothing  for  God. 

73 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

God  is  changeless  in  what  sense?  In  the  sense 
that  his  own  development  is  forever  at  the  full, 
but  not  in  the  sense  that  the  changes  on  earth 
and  in  men  mean  nothing  to  him.  A  satisfac- 
tory construction  of  the  reality  of  change  for 
God  may  be  beyond  us,  but  in  that  case  we 
would  better  leave  the  question  of  construc- 
tion open  rather  than  close  it  with  a  philos- 
ophy that  does  harm  to  the  religious  needs  of 
the  human  heart.  While  we  must  not  give 
ourselves  up  to  contradictions  of  logic,  we 
must  follow  James  and  Bergson  in  putting 
the  claims  of  life  above  those  of  the  strictly 
speculative  intellect. 

So  then  we  accept  the  challenge  of  the 
modern  protests  against  the  absolute  and  the 
infinite  and  declare  for  certain  limitations  in 
a  God  who  is  to  be  a  living  force  with  men. 
It  may  appear  later  that  these  limitations  are 
in  part  self-assumed  and  in  part  the  expres- 
sions of  moral  fullness  of  life,  but  in  any  case 
we  must  get  God  near  to  men.  It  is  worth 
while  to  make  the  Almighty  mighty. 

In  the  first  place,  a  Creator  of  the  universe 
is  bound  by  the  creations  which  he  makes.  We 
have  spoken  of  the  universe  as  founded  in 
thought.  If  there  is  nothing  in  existence 
apart  from  thought,  and  the  universe  is  a  vast 

74 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

set  of  activities  expressing  thought,  the 
thought  must  move  according  to  a  divine 
grammar  and  syntax  and  rhetoric  if  it  is  to 
be  of  service  for  men.  Men  must  not  be  dis- 
mayed if  they  cannot  understand  all  of  the 
language,  but  they  may  expect  to  understand 
some  of  it.  The  universe  may  not  be  intelli- 
gible, but  it  must  be  more  than  a  set  of  inco- 
herent ejaculations.  This  requirement  would 
rule  out  arbitrary  whim  and  caprice.  Now, 
thus  far  there  would  seem  to  be  no  limitation 
upon  the  divine  beyond  the  requirement  that 
every  utterance  be  rational,  which  is,  of 
course,  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  limitation. 
But  when  we  think  of  the  universe  as  a  system 
we  must  think  of  the  Creator  as  tied  up  to  the 
demands  of  that  system.  That  is  to  say,  if 
there  is  to  be  system,  the  Creator  cannot 
thereafter  treat  a  particular  part  as  if  it  stood 
by  itself  alone.  He  might  treat  it  otherwise 
than  he  does  if  it  stood  alone,  or  if  it  were  part 
of  a  smaller  system,  or  if  it  were  in  a  different 
system.  Some  thinkers  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  seek  for  an  explanation  of  the  problem  of 
evil  in  the  conflicts  which  may  arise  between 
the  good  of  the  parts  of  the  system  and  the 
good  of  the  whole  of  the  system.  Without 
subscribing  to  such  extreme  doctrine  we  may 

75 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

all  admit  that  the  carrying  on  of  a  finite 
system  puts  limitations  on  the  Cause  back  of 
it.  These  limitations  come  to  even  clearer 
light  when  we  think  of  the  relations  between 
the  Cause  and  Ground  of  all  things  and  the 
individual  souls  as  we  know  them.  Espe- 
cially is  this  true  if  we  are  to  think  of  the  in- 
dividuals as  free.  How  to  establish  freedom 
speculatively  we  do  not  pretend  to  say,  but 
the  objections  to  freedom  have  usually  been  in 
the  name  of  an  Absolute  or  Infinite  for  whom 
or  for  which  freedom  of  men  would  be  a  dis- 
turbing factor.  If  the  world  is  Absolute  Mat- 
ter or  Absolute  Idea,  freedom  for  the  individ- 
ual seems  out  of  the  question.  If  the  World- 
Cause  is  a  Person  whose  sovereignty  must  not 
be  divided  with  any  other  will  whatsoever,  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  must  be  given  up. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  freedom  at  least  seems 
to  be  here  as  a  throbbing  fact  in  the  life  of  the 
individual.  We  are  all  forced  to  admit  the 
real  limitations  upon  this  freedom.  It  may 
be  that  many  of  our  choices  even  when  we 
seem  to  ourselves  most  free  are  the  play  and 
interplay  of  underlying  necessities,  but  after 
every  such  admission  we  have  to  come  back 
to  the  conviction  of  the  fact  of  freedom  in  the 
individual.  Over  against  this  is  the  neces- 

76 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

sity  of  some  limitation  for  the  Back-Lying 
Power.  Why  not  accept  the  limitation?  If 
an  individual  is  free,  the  Cause  and  Ground 
of  things  must  accept  limitations  upon  him- 
self as  a  consequence  of  that  freedom.  The 
old  picture  of  the  master  leading  a  servant  is 
in  place  here.  The  chain  binds  the  servant, 
but  it  also  limits  the  master.  How  much  more 
real  is  the  limitation  if  the  servant  is  rebel- 
lious or  sulky?  This  is  only  a  poor  illustra- 
tion, to  be  sure,  but  it  has  at  least  a  sugges- 
tive value.  If  there  are  free  individuals  in  the 
world,  their  wills  must  be  taken  into  account 
in  physical  and  mental  and  moral  spheres. 
There  is  the  possibility  of  conflict  between  the 
souls  of  men  and  the  soul  of  God,  or  there  is 
the  possibility  of  cooperation.  Even  in  the 
latter  case,  however,  there  is  limitation  for 
God.  The  best  human  will  may  be  so  slow  as 
to  impose  delay  upon  a  divine  will.  All  this 
is  at  times  obscured  by  the  fact  that  after  a 
clearly  evil  course  has  been  chosen  by  human 
wills  good  seems  to  result  in  the  end — which, 
of  course,  can  mean  only  that  a  Higher  Intelli- 
gence has  made  the  best  possible  of  a  bad 
situation. 

Furthermore,  we  can  see  that  there  must  be 
limitation   for  God  in  any  special  work  of 

77 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

revelation  which  he  wills  to  undertake.  If  the 
movement  is  to  show  itself  through  a  national 
development,  the  laws  which  govern  national 
life  must  be  observed.  Now,  it  has  long  been 
the  special  claim  of  Christianity  that  God  has 
for  his  glory  that  he  is  willing  to  take  upon 
himself  limitations  for  the  sake  of  reaching 
men.  One  of  the  great  attractions  of  the  doc- 
trine of  incarnation  for  men  has  been  the 
thought  that  in  the  incarnation  the  gift  of  God 
has  really  meant  cost  to  God.  The  Christian 
thinker  has  always  maintained  that  the  will- 
ingness of  God  to  assume  limitations  has  come 
out  of  the  moral  fullness  of  the  divine  life. 
One  of  the  encouraging  signs  of  present-day 
religious  thinking  is  the  movement  away  from 
the  God  of  the  abstract  to  the  God  of  the  con- 
crete, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  connection  with 
the  concrete  means  limitation. 

But  what  becomes  of  the  modern  doctrine 
of  the  divine  immanence  if  such  considera- 
tions as  those  just  adduced  are  allowed  to 
have  sway?  Has  not  the  doctrine  of  imma- 
nence as  held  to-day  been  a  help  to  faith  in 
bringing  God  near?  Undoubtedly  it  has,  but 
undoubtedly  also  it  has  wrought  some  confu- 
sion to  faith.  God  is  in  all  things  in  one  sense, 
but  not  in  all  senses.  There  are  degrees  of 

78 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

nearness.  God  is  in  the  world  in  the  sense 
that  the  world  is  the  expression  of  his  thought 
and  activity.  But  all  thoughts  are  not  the 
same  thoughts.  We  have  to  keep  away  from 
that  old  fallacy  of  "Thought"  spelled  with  a 
capital.  The  world  is  not  so  much  Thought  as 
thoughts.  The  value  of  the  doctrine  of  imma- 
nence is  that  it  does  away  with  the  idea  of  any 
sort  of  mechanical  existence  with  laws  of  its 
own  which  God  must  break  in  order  to  reach 
men.  This,  however,  merely  furnishes  a  start- 
ing point.  The  thought  of  God  in  a  particular 
situation  can  be  determined  only  from  a  study 
of  that  situation.  God  is  in  the  lives  of  men, 
but  not  in  the  lives  of  all  men  alike.  He  is  in 
the  lives  of  bad  men.  In  him  even  the  worst 
of  men  live  and  move  and  have  their  being. 
But  in  what  sense  is  God  in  the  life  of  a  bad 
man?  In  the  sense  that  he  is  giving  the  gift 
of  life  even  to  a  bad  man,  and  seeking  to  work 
through  the  life  of  the  man  to  lift  him  out  of 
evil.  But  God  is  not  in  the  bad  man  in  the 
same  sense  that  he  is  in  the  good  man.  In  one 
sense  God  is  near  all  men  alike.  In  another 
sense  everything  depends  upon  the  man. 
There  really  have  to  be  about  as  many  phras- 
ings  of  the  doctrine  of  divine  nearness  as 
there  are  different  men. 

79 


THE    INCREASE    OF   FAITH 

But  all  this  seems  to  leave  us  at  amazingly 
loose  ends.  We  have  not  a  system  of  the  kind 
to  which  we  have  been  used.  No,  we  have  not, 
but  we  have  an  open  world  before  us.  We 
have  finite  lives  which  can  come  progressively 
nearer  to  God. 

And  here  we  reach  at  last  a  final  question. 
We  have  seen  the  movement  away  from  the 
old  materialism,  through  absolute  idealism  to 
personalism.  It  is  in  the  lives  of  persons  that 
we  are  to  seek  for  fuller  revelations  of  divine 
life.  But  what,  after  all,  in  the  lives  of  these 
persons  is  to  give  us  the  clue  to  the  truth  for 
which  we  seek? 

There  is  an  answer  ready  at  hand  in  a  popu- 
lar movement  which  is  called  pragmatism.  It 
may  be  well  to  approach  this  final  question 
through  some  suggestions  thrown  out  by  this 
present-day  system  of  philosophical  thinking. 
Pragmatism  is  the  affirmation  that  beliefs  are 
to  be  tested  by  their  consequences  in  the  life  of 
the  believers.  There  is  really  nothing  new  in 
the  system  except  the  brilliancy  of  the  treat- 
ment of  men  like  James  and  the  extraordinary 
vogue  which  the  system,  if  it  can  be  called 
a  system,  has  reached  through  falling  in  with 
the  urgent  demands  of  the  time  for  emphasis 
upon  practical  results  and  actual  contacts 

80 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

with  the  life  which  we  are  now  living.  All 
that  is  important  in  the  system  reaches  back 
to  Kant.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Kant 
showed  that  formal  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God  and  of  the  facts  of  freedom  and  immortal 
life  is  impossible.  He  did,  however,  insist  that 
these  ideas  are  the  postulates  of  the  practical 
reason.  While  we  cannot  formally  prove  them 
to  be  true,  we,  nevertheless,  hold  fast  to  them 
for  their  practical  value.  While  they  are  not 
constitutive  principles  of  the  reason,  they  are 
in  a  profound  sense  regulative  principles  not 
only  for  reason  but  for  life.  The  line  of  phil- 
osophical development,  however,  did  not  fol- 
low from  Kant's  emphasis  on  the  practical 
reason.  It  went  through  Fichte  to  Hegel  and 
the  absolute  idealist.  Then  came  Ritschl  in 
protest  against  the  absolute  idealists  with  his 
denial  of  any  considerable  place  in  theology 
for  speculative  methods  of  the  metaphysical 
sort.  For  him  religious  ideas  were  "value- 
judgments"  showing  their  worth  by  their  value 
in  life. 

There  is  not  much  sign  that  the  pragmatists 
of  to-day  know  the  Eitschlian  system.  There 
is  nothing  German  about  present-day  prag- 
matism. It  is  impatient  of  that  systemization 
which  we  think  of  as  characteristically  Ger- 

81 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

man.  And  pragmatism  is  not  in  the  slightest 
degree  theological  in  its  origin.  James  him- 
self began  his  work  with  studies  in  physiology. 
It  was  only  in  quite  late  years  that  his  reli- 
gious interest  became  outspoken.  Moreover, 
pragmatism  is  quite  ambitious.  It  would  ask 
us  to  accept  a  criterion  for  truth  in  all  realms. 
Like  the  believers  in  all  new  systems,  the  be- 
lievers in  the  all-sufficiency  of  pragmatism 
carry  their  claims  to  great  extremes.  And  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men  claim  to  be  prag- 
matists.  In  some  puttings  of  the  belief  it 
would  seem  that  pragmatism  would  allow  a 
man  to  believe  all  that  works  well  with  him, 
or  that  agrees  with  him,  or  that  he  fancies.  A 
man  might  preach  the  doctrine  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man,  or  he  might  be  a  follower  of 
Nietzsche,  and  still  be  a  pragmatist.  He  might 
be  an  individualist  or  a  socialist,  a  theist  or 
a  pantheist,  or  a  polytheist  or  a  pluralist  or  an 
absolutist.  As  a  matter  of  historic  truth  the 
pressure  of  real  or  fancied  life-needs  has  been 
back  of  all  these  beliefs.  When  we  hear  that 
a  man  is  a  pragmatist  the  next  question  may 
well  be  as  to  what  else  he  is.  Accepting  prag- 
matism may  mean  that  the  door  is  open  to  ac- 
cepting anything  or  everything  else. 

The  man  who  first  hears  of  pragmatism 
82 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

may  feel  that  at  last  the  way  is  open  for  him 
to  believe  anything  or  everything  or  nothing, 
just  as  he  pleases.  A  teacher  in  ethics  has 
pointed  out  that  one  hearing  the  principles  of 
Epicurus  for  the  first  time  might  imagine 
that  at  last  the  doors  are  open  to  all  manner 
of  pleasure-seeking  with  the  sanction  of 
ethical  precept,  but  that  such  a  one  will  find 
as  soon  as  he  comes  close  to  his  problem  that, 
after  all,  many  doors  are  closed.  So  with 
pragmatism,  for  pragmatism  with  its  doctrine 
of  consequences  as  the  test  of  truth  must 
recognize : 

1.  The  existence  of  an  objective  order.    The 
consequences  must  be  the  consequences  of  the 
long  run.    A  man  might  declare  that  the  con- 
sequences are  best  for  him  in  denying  the 
existence  of  a  material  world,  and  he  might 
get  on  comfortably  with  the  belief  for  a  while, 
but  not  for  long. 

2.  The  pragmatist  must  make  some  conces- 
sion to  logic,  else  there  would  be  no  sense  in 
reasoning.     It  would  seem  rather  absurd  to 
try  to  find  a  system  with  no  reliance  upon 
logic.     Of  course  some  pragmatists  go  so  far 
as  to  make  even  mathematical  axioms  prac- 
tical postulates,  virtually  denying  the  mind 
any  power  of  insight  on  its  own  account. 

83 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

3.  The  pragmatist  must  concede  the  exis- 
tence of  others  besides  himself,  but  with  this 
concession  there  must  be  a  social  as  well  as  an 
individual  set  of  consequences  for  beliefs,  and 
the  two  sets  will  often  come  into  conflict. 
There  is  no  relief  here  on  the  pragmatist  basis. 

4.  The  pragmatist  must  yield  to  the  au- 
thority of  consequences  as  these  have  revealed 
themselves  in  great  individuals. 

5.  The  pragmatist  must  take  into  account 
inner  as  well  as  outer  consequences,  else  the 
system  will  sink  into  a  low  order  of  utilita- 
rianism.   The  most  practical  consequences  are 
not  necessarily  outer. 

Thus  we  might  go  on.  Still,  after  we  have 
said  all  this  we  must  say  further  that  the 
preaching  of  the  pragmatic  philosophy  does 
pave  the  way  for  the  preaching  of  an  essen- 
tially Christian  doctrine.  The  Founder  of 
Christianity  taught  that  discipleship  means 
the  doing  of  the  deeds  of  the  kingdom,  that  he 
that  heareth  the  words  and  doeth  them  is  the 
one  who  gets  the  rock  foundation,  that  he 
that  doeth  the  will  of  God  shall  know  the  doc- 
trine of  God.  Christ  came  that  men  might 
have  life,  but  life  has  deeper  roots  than  specu- 
lation. Life  flowers  out  into  Christian  con- 
sciousness and  Christian  consciousness  in 

84 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

turn  sends  new  powers  back  into  the  root  and 
tree  and  branch. 

Our  long  discussion  comes  to  this — that  the 
movements  of  modern  philosophy  are  not 
away  from  faith,  but,  rather,  in  the  direction 
of  faith.  Nothing  in  philosophy  itself  can 
establish  the  Christian  standpoint;  but  noth- 
ing in  philosophy  can  block  the  way  of  Chris- 
tian revelation,  and  much  can  aid  that  revela- 
tion. There  are  no  mechanical  or  idealistic 
systems  which,  standing  in  their  own  light, 
are  a  barrier  to  the  demands  of  Christian  life. 

The  demands  of  Christian  life !  Life  shows 
itself  in  its  power  to  make  demands  and  to 
seize  what  it  requires  to  satisfy  those  demands. 
The  Christian  conception  needs  the  idea  of  a 
material  universe  in  which  God  shows  at  least 
a  measure  of  this  thought.  While  we  might 
never  suspect  the  presence  of  God  in  the  world 
from  an  inductive  scrutiny  alone,  we  do  find 
signs  of  his  presence  when  we  search  for  the 
plan  which  we  feel  must  be  there.  We  need 
the  idea  of  a  vast  spiritual  organism,  a  body 
of  God,  which  is  to  set  forth  the  immensity  of 
the  divine  Life,  and  as  we  work  with  this  de- 
mand in  mind  we  find  a  satisfaction  which 
we  believe  is  an  indication  that  we  are  on  the 
path  to  the  truth.  We  feel  the  need  of  the 

85 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

presence  of  God  in  the  life  of  the  individual, 
and  we  hold  fast  to  the  idea  of  prayer,  not  for 
extraordinary  answers  here  and  there,  but  for 
the  increasing  life  in  him  who  prays. 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  we  have  made  out 
a  rather  fragmentary  and  broken  plight  for 
current  philosophic  thinking.  This  is  just 
the  advantage  which  confronts  the  student  to- 
day. The  tight  systems  are  broken  up.  The 
windows  and  the  doors  are  open.  It  is  per- 
missible for  us  to  believe  that  the  divine  Spirit 
is  near  enough  to  us  to  find  us  and  to  help  us 
on  and  up.  Whatever  seems  to  be  on  and  up 
we  shall  reach  after.  And  if  we  find  ourselves 
moving  on  and  up,  we  shall  feel  that  we  are 
on  the  right  path. 

Of  course  truth  is  truth  and  finally  stands 
in  its  own  right.  But  the  final  truth  which 
thus  stands  in  its  own  right  is  not  the  truth 
of  speculative  statement,  but  the  truth  of  life. 
A  life,  a  moral  person — this  is  the  good  on  its 
own  account.  If  this  is  the  good-in-itself,  we 
have  to  consider  speculative  statements  in 
somewhat  of  an  instrumental  capacity.  They 
are  the  tools  by  which  the  mind  takes  its  direc- 
tion and  surveys  its  path.  A  belief  may  be 
useful  for  one  time  and  not  for  another.  Or, 
to  make  the  matter  more  vital  still,  the  belief 

86 


THE  PHILOSOPHIC  OUTLOOK 

is  the  food — or  part  of  the  food — on  which  the 
life  feeds.  The  final  test  is  the  test  of  life. 
And  thus  the  life  moves  on  toward  God.  The 
world  is  open;  the  sky  is  free.  Whatever  the 
life  finds  necessary  for  its  growth  it  will  take. 
It  cannot  make  itself  at  home  in  the  world  hy 
denying  the  facts  of  science,  or  the  truths  of 
logic,  or  the  foundations  of  social  order.  It 
will  search  for  the  truth  in  any  system  which 
has  presented  itself  or  which  will  present  it- 
self. It  will  live  upon  the  truth  of  the  system 
so  far  as  it  can  and  will  throw  away  the  error. 
If  some  object  that  this  is  unsystematic 
eclecticism,  the  only  reply  is  that  life  is  al- 
ways eclectic.  The  living  organism  lays  hold 
on  air  and  sunshine  and  water  and  food  in 
large  variety  for  the  sake  of  preserving  and 
propagating  itself.  The  great  revelation  is 
through  the  organism  which  we  may  call  the 
body  of  the  Spirit  of  God — the  family  of  be- 
lievers in  God.  Formal  statements  are  the 
outputs  of  the  vitality  of  this  organism.  The 
statements  must  not  be  so  held  as  to  smother 
or  crush  the  life  of  the  organism  itself.  For 
that  life  itself  is  the  center  around  which  all 
else  should  turn.  A  revealing  God  must  limit 
himself  to  the  persons  through  whom  he 
works,  but  through  the  lives  obedient  to  him 

87 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

he  makes  an  increasingly  large  and  significant 
revelation  of  himself.  The  life  of  a  good  man 
stands  in  its  own  right  because — paradoxical 
as  the  words  seem — it  points  beyond  itself  to 
the  life  of  God. 


88 


Ill 

SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

IT  is  the  aim  of  this  lecture  to  show  that  the 
widening  of  the  social  horizon  works  in  aid 
of  faith  by  bringing  into  prominence  the  great 
human  ideals.  Anything  which  lays  stress  on 
what  we  may  call  essential  humanity  works 
for  faith.  It  may  be  that  the  upholders  of 
ideals  of  human  rights  in  political  and  indus- 
trial and  social  realms  are  not  themselves 
adherents  of  religious  beliefs.  Agitators  and 
propagandists  of  doctrines  which  work  for 
lofty  human  ideals  may  themselves  be  agnos- 
tics or  skeptics  so  far  as  religious  beliefs  are 
concerned,  and  yet,  all  unconsciously  to  them- 
selves, may  be  working  for  the  increase  of  re- 
ligious faith.  Anything  which  exalts  our  con- 
ception of  what  human  life  ought  to  be  is  a 
veritable  revealer  of  God.  We  cannot  enrich 
a  human  ideal  without  at  the  same  time  en- 
riching our  idea  of  God. 

At  the  very  outset  of  such  a  discussion  we 
are  met  by  the  urgent  insistence  of  those  who 

89 


THE    INCBEASE    OF    FAITH 

hold  to  the  doctrine  of  the  economic  interpre- 
tation of  history,  that  the  effective  force  in 
setting  human  ideals  high  in  the  thinking  of 
men  has  not  been  the  perception  of  those 
ideals  themselves.  Physical  necessities  have 
been  the  great  driving  powers,  we  are  told. 
Hunger,  the  demand  for  better  houses  and 
costlier  raiment — these  are  the  compelling 
forces.  We  do  not  feel  any  need  to  discuss 
this  claim  at  length.  We  may,  however,  ven- 
ture one  or  two  remarks. 

First,  if  the  theory  is  true  it  is  rather  an 
odd  fact  that  these  physical  forces  reach  their 
highest  effectiveness  when  baptized  with  a 
moral  and  ideal  name.  No  one  denies  that 
hunger  is  a  driving  force  in  the  life  of  society. 
Men  who  are  working  for  human  rights  may 
frankly  say  that  they  are  trying  to  get  more 
bread  for  hungry  mouths.  But  before  the 
agitation  is  complete  the  movement  takes  on 
the  form  of  a  moral  appeal.  The  cynic  may 
say  that  all  this  is  hypocrisy,  but,  neverthe- 
less, lifting  the  appeal  to  the  moral  realm 
gives  it  added  power.  But  even  this  is  some- 
what aside  from  the  present  purpose ;  we  shall 
return  to  it  later. 

We  pass  now  to  a  second  remark,  namely, 
that  we  are  not  especially  concerned  with  the 

90 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

order  in  which  ideals  emerge  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  men.  It  may  be  that  the  economic  im- 
pulse comes  first  and  the  moral  impulse  arises 
as  an  afterthought.  We  are  not  thinking 
especially  of  before  and  after.  It  may  be  that 
men  do  not  see  the  full  significance  of  moral 
ideals  until  economic  issues  have  been  settled. 
To  use  the  common  expression,  as  long  as 
there  is  money  in  a  particular  course  the 
moral  aspect  may  not  have  a  chance  to  reveal 
itself.  This  economic  view,  with  all  its  truth, 
is  in  these  days  much  overemphasized,  but,  we 
repeat,  we  are  not  especially  concerned  with 
the  sequence  in  which  ideals  emerge.  The  fact 
is  that  the  ideals  do  emerge,  and  that  they 
seem  to  us  to  make  for  faith.  There  is  con- 
stant need  of  care  against  that  old  fallacy  that 
we  can  judge  the  worth  of  an  idea  wholly  by 
noticing  the  circumstances  of  its  origin. 
Holders  of  evolutionary  theory  often  fancy 
that  they  can  get  at  the  worth  of  an  idea  by 
determining  its  place  in  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cession. The  main  feature  of  a  human  ideal 
is  not  so  much  the  path  by  which  it  has  come 
as  the  direction  in  which  it  points.  The  ideal 
may  arise  from  the  earth,  but  if  it  arises  to- 
ward God  it  is  worth  our  study. 

Perhaps  the  best  start  for  our  general  pur- 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

pose  can  be  found  in  some  illustrations  from 
American  history.  It  will  be  understood  that 
there  is  no  attempt  here  to  trace  a  movement 
through  history  as  a  technically  trained  his- 
torical student  would  trace  such  a  movement. 
We  are,  of  course,  dependent  upon  others  for 
the  facts  here  presented.  All  that  we  claim  is 
that  the  facts  point  in  the  direction  of  an  en- 
larging human  ideal,  and  that  they  tend  to  in- 
crease our  respect  for  men  and  humanity. 

As  a  first  illustration  of  a  movement  which 
would  tend  to  increase  our  respect  for  hu- 
manity, and  especially  for  democracy,  we  take 
the  period  of  the  American  Civil  War  and  the 
years  which  immediately  followed  the  con- 
flict. We  can  imagine  the  gasp  of  astonish- 
ment with  which  some  will  greet  the  proposal 
to  show  from  democracy's  conduct  in  war  a 
reason  for  faith  in  humanity  and  for  respect 
for  humanity.  We  trust  that  we  shall  not  be 
supposed  to  suggest  that  there  is  anything 
ennobling  or  refining  in  war.  It  is  just  be- 
cause war  in  itself  is  hideous  that  we  use  the 
illustration.  It  may  increase  our  trust  in  de- 
mocracy to  see  how  it  carries  itself  in  seasons 
of  grievous  trial.  We  submit  democracy  to 
the  test  of  severest  conditions.  It  had  long 
been  said  before  the  Civil  War  that  the  test 

92 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

of  democracy  would  come  in  time  of  war.  The 
fact  that  democracy  stood  the  test  well  is  an 
item  to  be  set  down  to  humanity's  credit.  Of 
course  it  will  not  be  understood  that  we  are 
committing  so  palpable  an  error  as  to  identify 
humanity  and  democracy,  but,  surely,  no 
greater  promise  for  humanity  could  be  found 
than  to  find  a  democracy  of  some  twenty  mil- 
lions of  people  acquitting  itself  with  surpass- 
ing credit  in  time  of  strain. 

To  begin  at  a  plane  which  is  decidedly 
lower  than  the  moral  aspects  we  hope  later  to 
discuss,  discerning  critics  have  said  that  even 
in  its  military  aspects  the  conduct  of  the  war 
was  a  great  item  to  be  set  down  to  democracy's 
credit.  Spenser  Wilkinson,  a  foremost  Eng- 
lish military  authority,  has  used  the  American 
Civil  War  as  an  illustrative  commentary  on 
the  remark  of  the  great  Prussian  whose  work 
on  war  did  so  much  to  make  modern  Germany 
possible,  the  remark  of  Clausewitz  that  when  a 
whole  people  go  to  war,  animated  to  the  last 
man  with  a  common  purpose,  the  war,  while  it 
may  be  hesitating  in  its  first  policy,  will 
finally  take  on  as  distinct  and  definite  and 
true  a  form  as  if  it  were  being  conducted  by  a 
dictator — by  a  vast  military  genius  with  pro- 
fessional soldiers  obedient  to  his  will.  The 

93 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

only  difference  will  be  that  it  may  conceiva- 
bly require  a  longer  time  for  a  nation  in  arms 
to  get  itself  into  effective  action  than  for 
the  dictator.  Spenser  Wilkinson  applies  this 
remark,  as  we  have  said,  to  the  Civil  War. 
Taking  the  whole  four  years  together,  the  war 
may  be  looked  upon  as  one  battle  on  a  large 
scale.  The  history  of  the  war  thus  becomes 
quite  simple.  It  will  not  suffice  to  say  that 
the  North  won  by  sheer  weight  of  numbers. 
The  weight  of  numbers  had  to  be  skillfully  ap- 
plied. The  North  won  by  turning  the  left 
flank  of  the  Confederacy  as  a  whole.  One 
blow  struck  the  Confederacy  in  twain  along 
the  line  of  the  Mississippi.  Another  broke  it 
from  Chattanooga  to  Atlanta.  Then  while 
the  head  and  front  of  the  Confederate  resist- 
ance was  held  fast  in  the  East,  the  Northern 
armies  moved  east  to  the  sea  from  Atlanta 
and  thence  north,  piercing  the  vitals  of  the 
Confederacy  in  all  directions.  The  contention 
of  Wilkinson  is  that  this  plan  is  as  simple  and 
direct  and  as  effective  as  if  conceived  by  the 
mind  of  a  Napoleon.  It  will  not  avail  against 
this  contention  to  say  that,  after  all,  the  work 
was  done  by  professional  generals.  In  the 
beginning  it  was  true  that  the  soldiers  of  the 
democracy  thought  that  one  man  was  as  likely 

94 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

to  be  a  good  captain  as  another  man, 
and  sought  to  fill  official  positions  by  ballot. 
As  the  war  progressed,  however,  all  this 
changed  and  the  conduct  of  the  war  passed 
into  hands  trained  to  war.  But  the  people 
themselves  were  responsible  for  this  change, 
and  the  generals,  after  all,  acted  only  in  re- 
sponse to  a  popular  demand.  Grant,  the  gen- 
eral wrho  cared  least  for  the  pressure  of  public 
opinion,  on  more  than  one  occasion  refused  to 
turn  back  because  the  people  were  looking  for 
advance  in  a  particular  direction  and  would 
interpret  any  sort  of  a  backward  step  as  a 
defeat.  The  plan,  as  a  whole,  reflected  the 
will  of  the  people.  If  it  be  objected  that  in  a 
war  between  contestants  who  were  practi- 
cally two  peoples  the  Prussian  theory  would 
call  for  like  unity  and  simplicity  of  plan  on 
the  other  side,  the  answer  must  be  that  the 
other  side  was  essentially  on  the  defensive 
and  had  to  adapt  its  plans  to  the  plans  of  the 
offensive. 

Now,  all  this  may  seem  rather  far-fetched, 
but  Wilkinson  has  this  much  on  his  side — 
that,  on  the  wrhole,  the  progress  of  the  North 
was  a  miracle  of  victory,  and  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  even  in  the  intellectual  insights 
required  in  a  highly  technical  field  a  whole 

95 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

people,  under  the  stress  of  a  great  crisis,  can 
come  to  an  understanding  which  in  a  single 
individual  would  be  superlative  genius  and  to 
a  force  of  will  which  in  an  individual  would 
be  entirely  titanic.  The  significance  of  figures 
like  Lincoln  and  Grant  is  partly  in  this,  that 
Lincoln  on  the  political  side  and  Grant  on  the 
military  side  were  incarnations  of  the  good 
sense  of  the  people.  In  the  words  of  Lincoln 
the  people  heard  their  own  thought  and  in  the 
blows  of  Grant  saw  their  own  deeds.  Neither 
was  a  man  standing  apart  from  his  time. 
Each  had  his  meaning  in  the  democracy  of 
which  he  was  an  expression  and  an  agent. 

But  great  as  is  the  credit  to  be  given  de- 
mocracy on  the  more  intellectual  side  at  the 
time  of  crisis,  the  credit  to  be  given  on  the 
moral  side  is  greater  still.  Bad  as  is  war  in 
any  case,  this  war  was  undertaken  on  both 
sides  in  the  name  of  an  ideal.  We  may  say 
all  we  please  about  the  pressure  of  economic 
forces  and  about  the  irreconcilable  conflict  be- 
tween two  hostile  industrial  systems.  We  are 
willing  to  grant  that  the  conflict  was  one  be- 
tween corn  and  cotton  as  to  which  should  be 
king,  but  that  was  not  all  of  the  meaning.  On 
the  one  side  was  the  broad  appeal  to  human 
rights,  and  on  the  other  the  rights  of  certain 

96 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

States  to  rule  themselves.  Each  side  claimed 
to  be  fighting  for  an  ideal  of  human  liberty. 
One  side  may  have  been  wholly  right  and  the 
other  wholly  wrong,  or  both  sides  may  have 
been  partly  right  and  partly  wrong,  with  one 
side  more  predominantly  right  than  the  other. 
The  essential  fact  is  that  the  underlying,  over- 
powering motives  did  not  come  to  full  force 
until  they  had  been  given  a  moral  statement. 
Now,  it  is  simply  out  of  the  question  to  say 
that  the  masses  on  one  side  or  the  other  were 
playing  the  part  of  hypocrites.  Human  ideals 
seemed  to  be  at  stake,  and  this  gave  the  con- 
test its  desperate  fury.  No  matter  what  we 
may  say  about  the  conspiracies  and  insinceri- 
ties of  leaders,  it  is  impossible  to  maintain 
that  the  people  on  either  side  thought  they 
were  fighting  for  other  than  a  moral  ideal. 
The  progress  of  time  has  shown  that  the  ideals 
of  humanity  for  which  the  North  stood  meant 
more  for  the  race,  that  the  right  of  the  people 
to  rule  was  more  closely  bound  up  with  the 
cause  of  the  Union,  that  the  final  platform  of 
the  Union  was  for  the  broader  charter  of  hu- 
man rights.  It  may  seem  strange  to  us  that 
any  man  could  invoke  the  aid  of  God  in  try- 
ing to  secure  bread  earned  by  the  sweat  of 
another  man's  brow,  but  we  would  do  well  to 

97 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

heed  the  statesman's  word  that  in  this  we 
judge  not  that  we  be  not  judged. 

The  war  too  was  carried  through  in  as  hu- 
mane a  fashion  as  possible.  Atrocities  com- 
mitted in  prisons  here  and  there,  for  which 
the  scarcity  of  provisions  and  the  desperate 
nature  of  the  conflict  itself  furnished  some  ex- 
cuse, ought  not  to  obscure  our  eyes  to  the  truth 
that  in  spite  of  bloodshed  beyond  all  parallel 
the  warfare  did  not  brutalize  or  vulgarize  the 
mass  of  the  soldiers.  Outrages  and  rapacity 
there  were  in  plenty,  but  when  we  reflect  that 
with  the  war  at  its  height  a  million  of  men 
were  engaged  on  one  side,  the  wonder  is  that 
barbarities  were  so  few.  When  the  conflict 
had  ceased  there  was,  indeed,  some  clamor  for 
revenge,  but  the  victor's  hands  were  not 
stained  with  the  blood  of  political  prisoners. 
And  when  the  armies  were  disbanded — wonder 
of  wonders! — they  went  back  quietly  to  the 
pursuits  of  peace.  Now,  we  protest  that  we 
would  not  say  one  word  in  glorification  of 
war,  but  the  manner  in  which  democracy  went 
through  this  period  of  strain  with  so  little  of 
moral  damage  tends  to  increase  our  confi- 
dence in  the  loyalty  of  masses  of  men  to  high 
ideals.  The  period  of  reconstruction,  horrible 
as  it  was,  was  amazingly  brief  for  a  period  in 

98 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

the  life  of  a  nation,  and  was  partly  the  out- 
come of  a  real,  though  partly  doctrinaire,  de- 
votion to  a  human  ideal.  The  conceptions 
which  philanthropists  held  of  the  freedman  in 
those  days  seem  very  humorous  to  us  as  we 
look  back,  but  the  conceptions  were  a  credit  to 
the  men  who  held  them.  Longfellow  repre- 
sented the  Negro's  dream  as  carrying  him  back 
to  Africa,  where  "once  more  a  king  he  strode." 
The  poet  evidently  knew  very  little  about  the 
dreams  of  the  actual  slave,  but  the  misconcep- 
tion was  really  a  tribute  to  Longfellow.  The 
Negro  problem  is  hard  enough  for  us  after 
nearly  fifty  years  of  experiment.  There  is 
little  excuse  for  harshness  in  criticism  of  the 
failures  of  the  first  experiments.  The  idealists 
of  the  day  lacked  knowledge  in  a  realm  where 
there  were  no  precedents.  And  they  had  to 
cope  with  outrageous  adventurers  and  with  the 
national  reaction  after  four  years  of  tremen- 
dous emotional  upheaval,  a  reaction  showing 
itself  in  indifference  on  the  part  of  many  as  to 
how  the  nation  should  discharge  its  responsi- 
bilities. But,  on  the  whole,  considering  the 
lack  of  detailed  and  accurate  data  on  the 
working  of  social  institutions  in  untried 
hands,  the  wonder  is  that  so  little  damage  was 
done.  The  working  of  popular  thought, 

99 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

through  the  whole  period,  tends  to  deepen  our 
respect  for  the  people's  respect  for  humanity. 
Passing  from  a  period  which  is  to  all  prac- 
tical intents  and  purposes  closed,  to  one  in  the 
midst  of  which  we  are  now  moving,  we  call 
attention  to  the  significance  for  American  so- 
ciety of  the  passing  away  of  the  American 
frontier.  Professor  Frederic  J.  Turner  has 
written  with  profound  instructiveness  on  this 
theme.  He  even  sets  a  date  to  mark  the  time 
when  the  nation  passed  out  of  one  stage  and 
into  another.  This  he  finds  to  have  been  the 
year  1890,  when,  according  to  the  census,  it 
had  become  no  longer  possible,  at  least  in  any 
considerable  part  of  the  country,  to  secure 
land  free  from  all  cost  except  just  the  cost  of 
appropriating  it.  To  be  sure,  there  are  still 
many  parts  of  the  country  where  essentially 
frontier  conditions  prevail,  but  these  are  be- 
coming fewer  and  smaller.  The  situation  is 
somewhat  as  if  a  continent-wide  stream  which 
was  moving  easily  toward  the  West  had  at 
last  reached  a  check  and  had  come  to  a  stand- 
still or  to  eddying  currents.  So  far  as  the 
exceedingly  difficult  problems  are  concerned, 
the  real  frontiers  of  to-day  are  the  cities.  The 
movement  to-day  is  toward  the  cities,  and  the 
new  problems  are  city  problems. 

100 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS     • 

Professor  Turner  thinks  that  the  passing 
away  of  the  frontier  will  bring  in — indeed,  has 
already  brought  in — a  new  type  of  democracy, 
a  type  in  which  social  elements  are  bound  to 
predominate  more  largely  than  in  the  individu- 
alistic type  of  the  frontier.  In  the  old  days 
of  the  frontier  a  settler  was  not  likely  to  live 
near  enough  to  his  neighbor  to  be  disturbed 
by  him;  there  was  room  enough  to  allow  the 
most  quarrelsome  neighbors  to  get  along  with- 
out too  frequent  clash.  If  the  neighbor  be- 
came intolerable,  it  was  possible  for  the  ag- 
grieved or  disturbed  man  to  move  on  to  other 
lands  to  be  had  for  the  taking.  That  day  has 
long  since  gone.  It  is  now  nearer  the  fact  to 
say  that  our  problem  is  to  get  along  with  the 
neighbor  whether  we  like  him  or  not.  At 
most,  all  we  can  hope  for  by  change  is  a  change 
of  neighbors.  The  neighbor  is  bound  to  us 
henceforth. 

There  is  no  denying  that  with  the  passing  of 
the  individualistic  type  of  democrat  we  have 
lost  much.  There  was  a  romance  in  the 
independence  of  the  pioneer  which  is  very  de- 
lightful to  read  about.  There  was  a  resource- 
fulness, too,  that  never  ceases  to  amaze  us. 
There  was  an  inner  moral  strength  altogether 
surprising.  But  there  was  another  side.  The 
101 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

life  was  barren.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  some 
men  can  rejoice  in  solitude  and  can  even  be- 
come philosophers  and  poets  in  the  solitude, 
life  in  the  solitude  is  for  most  men  barren. 
Pioneer  conditions  were  frequently  too  hard 
to  allow  any  real  rest,  and  what  spare  time 
there  was  went  to  loafing  and  dozing.  The 
pleasures  of  the  frontier  were  often  coarse  and 
gross.  There  grew  up  a  false  sense  of  honor  at 
times — a  quickness  for  resenting  insult  that 
often  left  no  chance  for  an  explanation  that 
might  save  a  friendship  and  perhaps  a  life. 
Along  with  this  went  a  development  of  a  demo- 
cratic doctrine  from  which  we  have  not  yet  re- 
covered— that  every  man  is  as  good  as  every 
other  man  in  every  particular.  The  Civil  War 
did  much  to  show  the  fallacy  of  this  idea 
through  the  mistakes  which  came  with  the 
notion  that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  in 
the  leading  of  troops,  but  the  idea  still  per- 
sists. The  fallacy  was  partly  responsible  for 
the  "spoils  system"  which  appropriately 
enough  was  made  potent  by  that  king  of 
frontiersmen,  Andrew  Jackson.  While  we  of 
to-day  have  seen  little  of  the  pioneer,  many  of 
the  pioneer's  ideas  descend  to  us  as  a  heritage 
not  altogether  blessed.  The  worst  legacy  is 
just  the  idea  that  democracy  is  not  an  organi- 

102 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

zation  but  an  assembly  of  units,  each  of  which 
is  what  it  is  on  its  own  account,  and  each  of 
which  maintains  that  it  can  do  as  it  pleases. 
The  fact  that  at  one  time  such  a  conception 
was  useful,  and  even  indispensable,  should  not 
prevent  our  seeing  the  limitations  of  the  con- 
ception for  a  later  time. 

The  conception  which  we  are  fast  approach- 
ing is  the  conception  of  democracy  as  an  or- 
ganism. Of  course  this  doctrine  is  as  old  as 
political  theorizing  itself,  but  it  is  to-day  re- 
ceiving a  setting  forth  on  a  scale  the  like  of 
which  the  world  has  not  before  known.  We 
have  to  adjust  our  life  to  that  of  our  neigh- 
bors. Now,  the  latter  type  of  democracy 
makes  possible  evils  which  cannot  be  found 
with  the  individualistic  type,  but  the  likelier 
possibility  is  that  the  ideal  of  human  life  will 
be  enriched  with  the  realization  of  democracy 
as  an  organism.  In  the  next  lecture  we  shall 
attempt  some  analysis  of  the  content  of  the 
ethical  ideal  to  which  men  are  advancing  in 
the  present-day  emphasis  on  social  values. 
Here  it  will  suffice  to  say  that  the  ideal  is,  or 
at  least  can  be,  richer  and  fuller  under  the 
new  conditions.  Two  persons  living  and 
working  together  can  think  of  more  things 
than  either  can  alone,  and  the  things  are  more 

103 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

apt  to  be  good  things  than  evil  things.  When 
numbers  of  persons  move  on  into  evil  together 
the  outcome  is  indeed  apt  to  be  more  tragic 
than  when  they  move  as  individuals.  Groups 
of  evildoers  may  occasionally  debase  the  hu- 
man ideal  worse  than  individuals  following 
out  their  desires  as  individuals,  but  the  groups 
are  apt  to  be  held  back  by  some  considerations 
of  morality  and  sanity  which  may  not  weigh 
with  an  individual.  In  a  healthy  community 
the  streams  of  life  which  reach  down  even  to 
the  least  part  of  the  organism  are  apt  to  be 
healthier  than  the  private  circulatory  system 
of  an  individual.  If  we  must  believe  that  the 
normal  life  is  the  social  life,  it  must  follow 
that  the  ideals  which  come  out  of  the  social 
life  are  healthier  than  those  which  come  out 
of  the  individualistic  order.  There  is  some- 
times safety  in  numbers  for  human  ideals. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  great  moral  and 
religious  insights  have  always  started  with 
some  individual  who  has  withdrawn  from  the 
life  of  the  community  and  has  brooded  in 
solitude  and  silence  until  a  revelation  has 
burst  upon  him.  Abraham  leaves  the  city  for 
the  desert  and  John  the  Baptist  grows  up  in 
the  wilderness.  But  Abraham,  according  to 
the'Story,  was  seeking  a  city,  and  John  finally 

104 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

drew  to  himself  all  Jerusalem  and  Judaea. 
Before  a  prophet  becomes  a  positive  force  he 
must  voice  an  insight  or  a  need  which  the 
people  have  at  least  half  felt  or  half  seen. 
From  what  has  been  said  in  a  previous  ad- 
dress it  will  be  remembered  that  we  do  not 
minimize  the  individual.  The  moral  person 
is  an  end  in  himself,  the  only  end  we  recog- 
nize. When  we  speak  of  the  social  organism 
we  do  not  delude  ourselves  with  the  fancy  that 
our  language  is  scientifically  exact,  any  more 
than  the  language  is  scientific  in  exactness 
when  we  speak  of  the  individualistic  theory  as 
atomistic.  Both  terms  are  descriptive  only  in 
a  figurative  sense.  The  figure  of  society  as 
an  organism  is  true  enough  for  our  present 
purpose.  The  expression  "social  conscious- 
ness" does  not  mean  that  there  is  a  conscious- 
ness apart  from  the  consciousness  of  indivi- 
duals. We  are  uttering  only  commonplace  in 
saying  that  society  is  nothing  apart  from  the 
individuals  that  compose  it,  and  we  are  will- 
ing to  declare  that  the  great  result  of  the 
social  activities  is  in  the  benefit  of  the  in- 
dividual, but  we  insist  that  the  individual 
comes  to  the  largest  life  when  he  is  so 
closely  connected  with  others  that  he  may 
be  spoken  of  a.s  a  part  of  a  social  organ- 

105 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

ism.  The  fact,  however,  must  not  be  lost  sight 
of  that  while  in  a  biological  organism  the 
parts  exist  predominantly  for  the  good  of  the 
whole,  in  a  social  organism  the  worthy  func- 
tion of  the  whole  is  the  good  of  the  parts.  It 
is  with  this  understanding  that  we  speak  of 
the  social  organism. 

The  transition  from  the  individualistic  to 
the  more  social  form  of  democracy  is  deter- 
minative of  our  social  problems  and  of  the 
restless  agitation  that  so  generally  prevails. 
If  it  be  maintained  that  present-day  agita- 
tion is  world-wide,  and  that  the  difficulties 
come  through  the  introduction  into  America 
of  social  ideals  from  Europe,  the  ready  answer 
is  that  American  conditions  have  begun  to 
approach  European  conditions  closely  enough 
to  make  plausible  the  suggestion  that  Euro- 
pean ideas  should  be  adopted  here.  Nobody 
can  foresee  the  outcome  of  the  present-day 
movements  toward  emphasis  on  social  values 
and  social  control,  but  some  general  forces 
make  for  the  atmosphere  in  which  faith 
flourishes. 

First  among  these  forces  which  aid  faith 
we  mention  the  demand  for  PUBLICITY.  Under- 
neath this  demand  is  the  assumption,  none  the 
less  real  because  half-conscious  or  uncon- 

106 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

scions,  that  the  people  can  understand  and 
that  they  have  a  right  to  know.  In  the  light 
of  publicity  faith  is  apt  to  flourish.  We  real- 
ize that  the  modern  democratic  movement 
drags  out  into  the  light  many  things  that 
would  better  be  kept  hidden,  things  trivial  or 
harmful,  but  every  year  shows  improvement. 
In  the  main,  the  modern  democratic  tendency 
is  increasing  the  importance  of  that  principle 
of  discussion  which  Walter  Bagehot  found  so 
significant  for  the  advance  of  civilization. 
Though  there  are  aspects  of  faith  which  are 
not  best  dealt  with  in  public  debate — and  of 
these  we  shall  speak  in  a  later  lecture — the 
broad  foundations  of  the  faith  are  served  by 
the  freest  discussion.  In  the  realm  of  faith 
much  may  happen  in  the  secret  depths  of  the 
soul,  but  faith  does  not  thrive  best  when  con- 
fined in  a  corner.  The  worst  impression  to 
give  people  concerning  faith  is  that  faith  is  a 
sort  of  secret  for  the  initiated  few.  Let  there 
be  the  fullest  discussion.  Let  any  man  who 
has  any  theory  about  the  Church  or  the  Bible 
or  religious  experience  feel  free  to  publish. 
Nothing  so  quickly  kills  error  as  free  discus- 
sion, and  nothing  so  firmly  establishes  truth. 
The  quickest  way  to  deal  with  some  forms  of 
skepticism  is  to  bring  them  to  utterance. 

107 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

Some  doctrines  are  so  fragile  that  they  break 
with  the  very  attempt  to  give  them  articulate 
statement.  Some  are  seen  through  as  soon  as 
they  are  expressed. 

If  we  may  indulge  in  what  seems  like  a 
digression,  we  may  call  attention  to  the  faith 
in  the  people  manifested  in  the  publication 
of  the  Bible  in  English  three  hundred  years 
ago.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  parallel  for 
this  event  as  a  revelation  of  sheer  confidence 
in  and  reliance  upon  the  mind  of  the  masses 
as  well  as  upon  the  content  of  the  Book  itself. 
When  we  consider  the  illiteracy  of  the  people 
of  the  time,  their  natural  proneness  to  mistake 
the  letter  of  a  revelation  for  its  spirit,  the  pos- 
sibility of  misunderstanding  through  the  na- 
ture of  the  Book,  we  can  only  wonder  at  the 
boldness  which  could  scatter  the  precious  seed 
of  the  gospel  on  such  a  field.  The  result  was 
not  due  merely  to  the  particular  type  of  people 
for  whom  the  translation  was  made.  The  re- 
sult has  been  similar  with  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  and  communities  and  races 
whenever  a  like  venture  has  been  made. 
It  is  worth  while  to  trust  religious  reve- 
lations to  the  people.  There  may  for  a  season 
be  misunderstanding  and  turmoil  and  ship- 
wreck, but  in  the  end  the  result  is  favor- 

108 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

able  to  faith.  One  test  of  the  worth  of 
a  new  religious  doctrine,  or  method  of 
study,  or  form  of  organization  is  to  get  it 
before  the  people  for  discussion.  Light  de- 
stroys some  growths  and  quickens  others. 
Modern  discussion  is  light  for  faith — not  the 
blaze  of  noonday,  indeed,  but  light  enough  to 
reveal  what  is  adapted  to  minister  to  the  deep 
human  needs  and  to  set  on  high  the  great  hu- 
man ideals.  The  moral  factor  is  by  no  means 
slight  in  the  modern  popular  demand  for 
publicity. 

A  second  great  demand  coming  out  of  the 
democratic  impulse  is  the  demand  for  SIM- 
PLICITY— simplicity  in  action  and  expression. 
The  people  are  much  too  busy  to  give  them- 
selves over  to  elaborate  intricacies.  The  de- 
mand on  institutions  of  all  sorts  is  that  the 
truth  for  which  the  institution  stands  be 
brought  at  last  to  such  simplicity  that  it  can 
be  grasped  for  popular  use.  Of  course  this 
demand  may  run  into  absurdity.  Justice 
Charles  E.  Hughes  has  called  attention  to  the 
danger  for  democracy  in  democratic  impa- 
tience with  expert  opinion.  But  the  impa- 
tience becomes  less  year  by  year,  partly  be- 
cause the  experts  themselves  show  more  skill 
in  reducing  their  revelations,  at  least  in  the 

109 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

practical  phases,  to  simplicity.  For  example, 
the  fight  of  the  modern  scientist  against  the 
world-old  plague  of  cholera  is  based  upon  the 
knowledge  obtained  from  minutely  technical 
processes.  Cultures  and  staining  agents  and 
microscopes  and  the  whole  modern  bacte- 
riological theory  and  technique  are  necessary 
for  the  immense  victory  of  our  day.  But  the 
final  message  to  the  people  in  danger  of  the 
plague  is  quite  simple.  It  is,  for  the  most 
part,  just  an  exhortation  that  they  keep  clean, 
eat  only  cooked  food,  and  boil  the  drinking 
water.  It  would  be  interesting  to  reflect  upon 
the  good  wrought  for  the  formulation  and 
perhaps  even  for  the  advance  of  scientific  doc- 
trines by  the  need  of  meeting  the  popular  de- 
mand that  the  practical  statement  of  the  truth 
be  simple. 

There  is  a  manifestation  of  this  same  desire 
too  in  the  current  call  for  more  direct  methods 
of  government  or  for  a  more  direct  instrument 
for  the  governmental  expression  of  the  popular 
will.  How  far  some  of  these  demands  can 
safely  be  heeded  is  a  problem  for  the  expert 
in  political  institutions.  Representative  gov- 
ernment would  seem  to  have  behind  it  a  long 
historic  development  suggesting  its  estab- 
lished usefulness  as  an  instrument  of  de- 

110 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

mocracy.  How  far  this  system  can  be  modified 
in  favor  of  more  direct  government  by  the  peo- 
ple is,  indeed,  a  serious  question.  It  is  not 
difficult,  however,  to  discern  the  moral  spring 
back  of  the  demand  for  direct  government. 
There  is  always  a  possibility  of  evils  creeping 
in  when  the  path  is  too  tortuous.  When  we 
must  be  too  long  in  learning  how  legislation  is 
achieved  we  are  apt  to  become  suspicious,  just 
as  we  feel  a  tendency  to  suspicion  when  it 
takes  a  money-maker  too  long  to  tell  us  how 
he  makes  his  money.  A  like  demand  for  sim- 
plicity is  seen  in  the  popular  protest  against 
legal  and  judicial  procedure.  We  all  know 
the  value  of  some  set  of  checks  in  public  move- 
ment. Public  sentiment  sometimes  runs  into 
a  fever,  and  the  courts  serve  the  people  by 
acting  as  a  cooling  and  steadying  factor.  But 
the  protest  against  courts  is  not  so  much 
against  a  system  of  brakes  in  a  democracy  as 
against  the  intricacy  and  lack  of  simplicity  in 
procedures.  When  mere  processes  and  de- 
cisions become  overtechnical  there  is  fear  on 
the  part  of  the  people  that  mischief  lieth  at 
the  door. 

Now,  all  of  this  movement  toward  sim- 
plicity is  both  an  indirect  and  a  direct  aid  to 
faith.  Just  as  faith  thrives  on  the  demand  for 

in 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

publicity,  so  it  thrives  also  on  a  demand  for 
simplicity.  The  demand  for  simplicity  enables 
the  believer  to  put  the  nonessentials  to  one 
side  and  to  fasten  his  thoughts  upon  the  fac- 
tors supremely  worth  while.  The  people 
quickly  weary  of  the  too  elaborate  in  religious 
doctrine  and  ritual  and  organization.  It  is 
well  for  faith  that  this  is  so.  Faith  thrives  on 
the  demand  for  the  simple.  The  higher  and 
more  important  the  truth,  the  easier  to  state 
that  truth  simply. 

The  third  demand  is  that  which  we  have 
already  mentioned  so  often,  the  increased  note 
of  emphasis  on  HUMANITY  in  modern  demo- 
cratic movements.  No  doubt  this  emphasis 
has  its  economic  side.  The  movement  away 
from  the  individualism  of  the  frontier  has  its 
economic  phase.  The  drawing  force  in  the  life 
of  the  pioneer  was  free  land.  The  exhaustion 
of  the  free  lands  would  inevitably  call  for 
profound  economic  readjustment.  But  what- 
ever the  cause  which  has  worked  for  the  bring- 
ing of  people  into  closer  relationship,  the  very 
fact  that  they  are  thrown  thus  together  makes 
for  a  larger  mutual  understanding.  While  the 
economic  movement  is  exceedingly  important 
in  itself,  it  often  best  shows  its  importance  by 
accentuating  the  emphasis  on  humanity  as  a 

112 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

standard  and  test  of  institutions.  Increasing 
stress  is  put  on  the  question  as  to  what  kind 
of  men  are  produced  by  the  institutions  of  to- 
day. No  institution  escapes  the  searching  in- 
quiry. Even  the  Church  must  not  be  looked 
upon  as  an  end  in  itself.  No  claims  for  divine 
authority  will  long  support  the  Church  if  it 
does  not  generate  right  influences  for  the  up- 
building of  men.  What  kind  of  man  is  pro- 
duced by  the  Church,  or  the  ideal,  or  the  social 
institution?  This  is  the  critical  inquiry. 

The  transition  from  individualistic  to  social 
democracy  is  marked  by  the  changing  man- 
ners of  democracy  in  the  bearing  of  men  to- 
ward one  another.  Elijah  Pogram,  of  Dick- 
ens's  Martin  Chuzzlewit,  may  have  been  and 
perhaps  was  a  caricature,  but  the  sting 
of  the  caricature  was  in  its  truth.  Part 
of  the  swagger  had  passed  out  of  American 
manners  fifty  years  ago,  but  somewhat  of  an 
overbearing  spirit  lingered  on  till  later.  The 
very  fact  that  men  have  to  be  in  closer  mutual 
contact  than  formerly  makes  for  larger  mu- 
tual consideration.  And  in  the  deeper  sense 
the  accent  on  the  most  truly  human  ideals 
marks  the  spirit  of  to-day.  Men  seem  quite 
willing  to  endure  inequality  of  distribution  of 
wealth.  That  inequality  always  has  been,  and 

113 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

quite  likely  always  will  be,  though  contrasts 
may  become  less  glaring.  But  resentment 
against  any  show  of  arrogance  on  the  part  of 
the  owner  of  wealth  is  abundant.  Even  vul- 
garity of  display  is  keenly  resented. 

When  we  reach  the  more  directly  indus- 
trial problem  of  our  day  we  find  the  same 
emphasis  on  the  demands  of  humanity.  The 
growth  of  huge  business  combinations  is  an 
illustration  of  the  form  in  which  the  mon- 
archical principle  persists  in  democratic  sur- 
roundings. No  kingly  leadership  has  ever 
been  more  striking  than  the  leadership  of 
some  who  have  made  themselves  the  heads  of 
vast  industrial  concerns.  Democracy  has 
much  to  gain  from  conserving  the  monarchical 
principle,  at  least  in  the  sense  of  furnishing 
scope  for  kingly  abilities,  but  must  stand 
against  any  tendencies  of  the  monarchical 
principle  in  modern  industrialism  to  inter- 
fere with  popular  welfare.  A  great  deal  of 
useful  discussion  has  gone,  on  in  recent  years 
showing  the  violations  of  law  by  which  some 
industrial  kings  came  to  their  power.  Evil 
doings  there  have  no  doubt  been,  but  it  will 
tend  to  a  more  complete  understanding  to  say 
that  when  these  great  movements  of  concen- 
tration and  consolidation  began  the  social  con- 

114 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

sequences  had  not  been  thought  out  or  worked 
out.  Now  that  the  social  consequences  have 
become  apparent,  the  worthy  aim  is  that  the 
consequences  be  such  as  to  be  in  the  full  sense 
harmonious  with  the  demands  of  humanity  re- 
gardless of  the  effect  on  the  industrial  institu- 
tions as  institutions. 

In  all  the  more  radical  movements  of  social 
reform  the  same  stress  on  human  rights  gives 
the  movements  their  power.  If  we  regard 
these  movements  as  dangerous  in  their  ten- 
dency, it  will  not  suffice  for  us  to  point  out 
the  inadequacies  of  their  logic.  The  inade- 
quacy of  the  logic  may  make  the  doctrines 
dangerous,  but  what  gives  the  power  is  the 
emphasis  upon  certain  human  needs.  Kevolu- 
tionary  and  extreme  socialism,  for  example, 
may  be  very  dangerous  to  the  community,  but 
the  wise  man  will  not  think  he  has  done  his 
whole  duty  in  pointing  out  the  danger.  This 
is  as  if  a  man  should  call  out  that  a  car  dash- 
ing along  a  particular  road  will  plunge  over  a 
precipice.  What  we  need  is  not  merely  to 
know  whither  the  logic  leads  but  to  under- 
stand how  to  control  the  power  which  drives 
the  theory.  We  may,  if  we  so  choose,  call  all 
these  theories  philosophies  of  failure,  but  fail- 
ure itself  is  so  much  a  tragedy  for  human  life 

115 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

that  there  is  a  protest  against  failure.  We 
call  for  the  most  searching  inquiry  into  the 
cause  of  failure,  to  determine  whether  such 
a  large  percentage  of  disaster  is  necessary. 
One  significant  feature  of  modern  social  pro- 
test is  that  it  has  arisen,  in  this  country  at 
least,  in  a  period  of  comparative  prosperity. 
Outside  of  the  mere  cost  of  living,  which 
though  serious  is  not  necessarily  calamitous, 
the  times  during  which  the  current  protest  has 
come  to  power  have  not  been  crises  of  indus- 
trial depression.  The  facts  which  have  called 
forth  the  protests  have  been  just  the  facts 
which  could  be  found  at  times  which  are  called 
prosperous.  And  the  protests  have  come  not 
wholly  from  the  men  who  have  been  them- 
selves under  the  burden  of  oppression.  The 
recruits  for  revolution  have  come  from  all 
classes  and  especially  from  those  who  have  had 
ample  opportunity  to  study  the  structure  of 
society.  The  spectacle  of  the  mass  of  human 
failure  has  got  not  only  on  the  nerves  but  on 
the  consciences  of  many  who  are  not  them- 
selves failures.  And  the  revolutionary  the- 
ories, dangerous  as  we  may  think  them,  are 
red  lights  showing  the  disasters  into  which  we 
may  come  if  the  underlying  humanities  are  not 
heeded.  The  humanities  have  the  right  of  way. 

116 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

It  requires  hardly  more  than  a  glance  to 
detect  the  presence  of  the  human  ideal  as  the 
criterion  of  social  institutions.  Of  course  the 
evil-hearted  are  with  us  always,  as  are  also 
those  who  delight  to  tinker  with  social  machin- 
ery, and  as  are  also  those  who  have  the  itch  for 
the  new.  But  after  we  have  made  allowance 
for  all  these,  the  criticism  which  gets  a  hearing 
with  the  people  is  that  which  has  behind  it  a 
genuinely  human  motive.  To  take  a  single 
instance,  note  the  growing  impatience  with 
that  protest  against  the  education  of  women 
and  the  opening  of  the  doors  of  economic  op- 
portunity to  women  which  gravely  informs 
us  that  the  true  sphere  of  women  is  the  home 
and  that  women  were  intended  to  be  wives 
and  mothers!  As  if  educated  women  could 
not  be  as  good  wives  and  mothers  as  the  un- 
educated. The  more  the  doors  are  opened  to 
women  in  the  field  of  economic  opportunity, 
the  fewer  the  marriages  likely  to  come  from 
motives  predominantly  economic.  If  a  woman 
is  not  to  marry,  we  ought  to  rejoice  in  the  con- 
ditions which  to-day  fill  the  single  life  with 
increasing  opportunity  for  culture  and  service. 
If  a  woman  is  to  marry,  the  increased  oppor- 
tunities outside  of  married  life  make  it  pos- 
sible for  marriage  to  be  more  and  more  a  free 

117 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

choice.  The  ideal  human  elements  come  more 
largely  into  play  and  the  compulsory  elements 
drop  into  the  secondary  place. 

It  remains  to  speak  briefly  of  the  extent  to 
which  the  strictly  human  ideals  are  playing 
their  part  in  international  relationship.  Here, 
again,  we  would  not  at  all  minimize  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  economic  forces.  Interna- 
tional commercial  considerations  were  never 
more  effective  than  to-day  in  bringing  the  ends 
of  the  earth  together,  but  when  once  the  ends 
have  been  brought  together  considerations 
other  than  the  economic  begin  to  rise  into  first 
place.  We  may  be  permitted  to  mention  three 
phases  of  international  activity  as  showing 
the  increasing  emphasis  by  the  people  on  hu- 
man considerations :  the  immigration  question 
in  our  own  country,  the  problem  of  the  Chris- 
tianization  of  non-Christian  nations,  the  in- 
ternational movement  against  war. 

In  immigration  the  effective  force  against 
legislative  restriction  has  always  been  the 
thought  of  America  as  the  refuge  of  the  op- 
pressed. America  has  been  thought  to  spell 
opportunity,  and  the  effective  obstacle  against 
restriction  has  been  a  lofty  ideal.  But  of  late 
years  we  have  come  to  see  that  the  motive  of 
desire  for  relief  from  civil  or  religious  oppres- 

118 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

sion  is  not  so  effective  in  bringing  the  aliens 
to  us  as  we  had  once  imagined.  The  fact  that 
there  are  worthy  political  or  religious  refu- 
gees does  not  blind  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
the  motive  with  the  masses  of  immigrants  to- 
day is  economic.  Of  course  an  economic  op- 
portunity is  a  moral  boon  to  men,  and  even 
when  men  sought  America  for  political  and  re- 
ligious freedom  they  were  not  unmindful  of 
the  material  chances  here.  But  the  class  of 
men  now  responding  to  the  lure  of  America  is 
not  the  same  as  in  other  days.  A  great  mass 
come  to  us  who  tend  to  lower  the  standard  of 
living  for  American  workmen.  The  "stand- 
ard of  living"  means  much  to  us.  It  means 
more  than  difference  between  the  grade  of  fish 
and  meat  and  vegetables  consumed  by  native 
Americans  and  that  consumed  by  laborers 
from  abroad.  It  is  said  that  carp  from  the 
Illinois  Kiver  are  shipped  in  immense  num- 
bers to  the  immigrants  in  New  York,  but  that 
the  American  laborer  will  not  touch  such 
coarse  food.  The  difference  in  standard,  how- 
ever, is  not  to  be  measured  by  a  difference  of 
attitude  toward  carp.  The  standard  of  living 
means  almost  anything  and  everything  for  the 
outlook  on  life.  It  means  that  there  shall  or 
shall  not  be  books  and  pictures  and  schooling 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

and  recreation  and  the  opportunities  for  the 
fullness  of  life. 

We  insist  that  it  is  its  essentially  human 
aspect  which  gives  the  immigration  question 
seriousness  in  the  minds  of  all  thinking  Ameri- 
cans. The  spectacle  of  thousands  of  men 
brought  from  abroad  to  work  in  the  mills  is 
in  itself  bad  enough,  but  the  spectacle  becomes 
worse  when  we  stop  to  think  that  these  force 
others  who  desire  higher  standards  of  living 
to  accept  a  paltry  wage.  In  the  face  of  this 
outcome  there  are  investigators  who  would 
restrict  immigration  very  rigidly.  If  the 
argument  is  put  to  such  students  that  they 
would  force  human  beings,  who  now  look  to 
our  country  as  the  land  of  hope,  back  upon 
hopeless  conditions  in  their  own  land,  the  re- 
ply is  forthcoming  that  the  very  best  way  for 
America  to  serve  the  world  is  to  maintain  her 
ideals  at  every  cost.  If  some  immigrants  who 
would  with  worthy  motives  come  to  us  are 
kept  out  by  any  exclusion  laws,  this  is,  in- 
deed, a  misfortune  to  those  thus  excluded  and 
to  us  also,  but  this  is  an  item  of  the  cost  which 
must  be  paid  for  the  maintenance  of  human 
ideals.  America  cannot  afford  to  cease  to  be 
an  object  lesson  to  the  world  as  to  what  can 
be  done  when  the  right  sort  of  civic  and  social 

120 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

ideals  get  a  chance.  It  might  well  be  that 
forcing  immigrants  back  into  their  own  lands 
and  thus  closing  the  vent  from  those  lands 
outward  toward  our  land  would  through  the 
congestion  and  pressure  in  those  lands  work 
for  reforms  there.  If  there  is  oppressive  hard- 
ship back  of  immigration,  it  might  be  that  the 
restriction  and  confinement  of  the  peoples  to 
their  home  lands  would  blow  the  tops  off  some 
ancient  evils.  There  are  more  students,  of 
course,  who  think  that  the  public  schools  and 
the  standard  of  American  life  so  promptly  in- 
fluence, if  not  the  newcomers  themselves,  at 
least  the  second  generation  of  immigrants, 
that  American  ideals  can  be  looked  upon  as 
safe.  The  point,  however,  upon  which  we  in- 
sist is  that  there  is  growing  impatience  with 
any  discussion  of  immigration  which  talks 
almost  in  impersonal  terms  of  labor  supply 
and  ignores  the  effect  on  human  ideals  from 
the  forced  adoption  of  low  standards  of  living. 
In  the  view  of  the  world  which  comes  with 
the  modern  outlook  upon  man  a  new  respon- 
sibility falls  on  the  Christian  nations  for  hold- 
ing before  the  whole  world  the  human  ideals 
which  make  up  the  Christian  thought  of  man. 
The  existence  of  millions  of  human  beings  in 
so-called  heathen  lands  under  conditions  which 

121 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

hardly  permit  human  life  from  one  point  of 
view  makes  for  pessimism.  To  frame  a  the- 
ory which  will  account  for  the  hard  plight  of 
millions  of  men  is  beyond  us.  Truly  the  non- 
Christian  nations  sit  in  darkness,  being  bound 
in  affliction  and  iron.  But  without  attempt- 
ing to  fathom  the  purposes  of  Providence  in 
the  history  of  nations,  the  truth  seems  to  be 
increasingly  manifest  that  the  only  power 
which  will  lift  the  heathen  nations  out  of 
their  plight  is  Christianity  with  that  ideal  of 
human  life  which  is  so  essential  to  the  Chris- 
tian system. 

Suppose  we  glance  at  a  land  like  China.  It 
is  customary  for  a  certain  type  of  traveler  to 
tell  us  that  the  fundamental  trouble  with 
China  is  economic,  that  the  pressure  of  the 
large  masses  of  population  on  the  land  is  in- 
tense beyond  calculation,  that  it  is  the  pres- 
sure which  has  stripped  the  hillsides  of  trees, 
and  that  has  exhausted  the  vitality  of  the  peo- 
ple till,  as  Bagehot  says,  the  nation  has  been 
caked  over  with  a  hard  crust  of  custom  which 
is  imperviously  obstinate.  Now,  we  avow 
again  that  we  do  not  underestimate  the  power 
of  the  economic  forces,  but  we  insist  that 
economic  and  psychological  factors  act  re- 
ciprocally upon  one  another  and  together  upon 

122 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

the  total  situation.  What  is  back  of  the  fact 
of  overpopulation  in  China?  The  demand  for 
sons.  What  is  back  of  the  demand  for  men? 
The  demand  for  earthly  service  to  be  rendered 
by  sons  to  fathers  after  the  fathers  shall  have 
passed  on  to  the  company  of  the  ancestors. 
In  other  words,  China  thinks  more  of  a  dead 
man  than  of  a  live  man.  In  any  civilization 
at  all  Christian  this  earth  belongs  by  right  of 
eminent  domain  to  the  people  now  living.  But 
in  China  a  false  religious  view  gives  rise  to  a 
false  relation  between  the  land  and  the  people. 
Polygamy,  concubinage,  and  promiscuity  in 
sexual  relations  are  encouraged,  writh  the  re- 
sult that  perhaps  five  generations  are  pro- 
duced in  a  length  of  time  through  which  only 
four  should  be  born.  The  strain  on  the  soil 
becomes  terrific.  Nature  falls  back  on  those 
rough  and  merciless  instruments  which 
Malthus  so  effectively  describes — famine, 
flood,  and  pestilence.  The  people  hang  on  to 
existence  by  so  flimsy  a  fringe  that  a  crop 
failure  means  death  to  thousands.  They 
crowd  down  into  the  river  valleys  so  close  to 
the  embankments  that  a  breach  brings  wide- 
spread disaster.  They  live  so  close  together 
that  the  plague  mows  down  its  victims  by  en- 
tire communities.  Nor  must  we  allow  our- 

123 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

selves  to  be  misled  by  the  fact  that  people 
living  in  such  conditions  develop  a  marvelous 
power  of  endurance.  We  must  not  accept  it 
as  a  tribute  to  the  people  that  they  can  live  on 
next  to  nothing.  Professor  Boss  has  shown 
that  a  peculiarity  of  the  Chinese  is  that  they 
have  demonstrated  what  a  large  part  of  the 
race  can  do  under  unfavorable  conditions. 
This,  however,  is  just  a  reason  why  the  whole 
system  should  be  changed.  The  race  is  not 
on  the  planet  for  the  purpose  of  showing  what 
can  be  done  under  unfavorable  conditions. 
The  conditions  must  be  made  favorable  for 
the  sake  of  the  large  human  result  which  is 
to  come. 

So  that  the  justification,  from  the  social 
standpoint,  of  the  attempt  to  Christianize  the 
non-Christian  nations  is  in  the  large  ideal  of 
humanity  which  is  at  the  heart  of  Christianity. 
The  aims  of  evangelism  must  be  more  than 
remedial.  Suppose  the  resources  of  Western 
civilization  are  used  to  better  the  merely  ma- 
terial situation  in  lands  like  China.  It  seems 
cold-blooded  to  say  so,  but  these  resources 
would  only  make  the  result  worse,  apart  from 
the  introduction  of  the  Christian  ideal  which 
sets  a  higher  value  on  human  life.  Polygamy, 
concubinage,  and  promiscuity  must  be  done 

124 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

away.  Life  must  be  made  more  sacred.  The 
birth  rate  must  be  lowered  from  animal  to 
human  proportions.  This  does  not  mean  the 
Westernization  of  the  Orient.  It  means  the 
humanization  and  Christianization  of  the 
Orient.  To  say  that  such  a  chasm  must  al- 
ways yawn  between  the  East  and  the  West 
that  an  essential  Christianity  can  never  be 
introduced  which  will  give  the  millions  of  peo- 
ple a  chance  at  life  on  human  terms  is  really 
to  despair  of  the  race. 

We  mention  briefly  the  crusade  against  in- 
ternational war  as  a  closing  illustration  of 
emphasis  on  the  claims  of  humanity.  A  great 
change  has  come  over  the  thinking  of  the 
world  in  respect  to  wars  in  the  last  half-cen- 
tury. A  war  which  should  be  frankly  and 
openly  commercial  and  materialistic  would 
hardly  be  tolerated  to-day.  The  economic  ele- 
ment is,  of  course,  a  force  in  every  war,  but  to 
put  the  appeal  squarely  down  upon  a  business 
basis  would  condemn  the  war  hopelessly.  To- 
day the  cost  in  human  terms  is  being  urged 
more  and  more.  Important  as  might  be  the 
world-wide  disturbance  of  capital  through  a 
war  or  number  of  wars,  the  disturbance  to  the 
happiness  of  the  plain  people  who  have  to  do 
the  fighting  and  the  suffering  is  more  im- 

125 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

portant  still.  In  this  connection  let  us  be 
thankful  for  those  international  labor  move- 
ments which  stand  against  war.  It  has  always 
been  necessary  to  consult  the  men  who  were 
to  furnish  the  financial  sinews  before  going  to 
war.  Let  us  rejoice  that  the  human  sinews- 
more  and  more  insist  on  being  consulted.  If 
there  is  to  be  war,  let  the  men  who  are  to  do 
the  dying  be  consulted  before  the  war  breaks 
out. 

But  the  telling  factor  against  war  is  just 
its  inhumanities.  Of  course  there  are  inhu- 
manities of  peace,  and  sometimes  in  a  choice 
between  inhumanities  war  must  be  chosen  as 
less  inhuman.  But  such  crises  are  becoming 
less  and  less  likely.  The  essential  inhumanity 
of  men's  killing  one  another  by  wholesale  is 
becoming  more  and  more  apparent.  Note  the 
impatience  with  which  men  meet  the  old  plea 
that  war  must  be  relied  on  as  a  sort  of  moral 
tonic  for  the  nations.  The  argument  would 
have  us  believe  that  we  must  resort  to  inhu- 
man means  to  make  men  human. 

We  come  to  the  end  of  this  long  and  per- 
haps tedious  discussion.  The  connection  be- 
tween the  working  of  the  various  forces  at 
which  we  have  looked  and  the  increase  of  faith 
may  not  have  been  immediately  clear.  .We 

126 


SOCIAL  MOVEMENTS 

must  remember,  however,  that  we  are  think- 
ing of  life  at  its  fullest  and  best,  and  that 
whatever  makes  for  full  and  good  life  makes 
for  faith.  It  does  not  require  the  detailed  in- 
formation or  the  technical  skill  of  the  expert 
to  detect  the  growing  emphasis  on  human  con- 
siderations in  modern  social  movement,  and 
this  emphasis  counts  for  faith.  If  it  seems 
that  all  our  stress  has  been  on  the  thought  of 
human  values  and  none  on  divine  values,  we 
have  to  reply  that  the  clearest  insight  we  can 
get  into  divine  life  is  through  high  human 
development.  Believing  in  a  system  which 
teaches  that  man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
a  system  which  places  the  incarnation  at  its 
center  as  its  most  essential  article  of  faith, 
which  depends  upon  a  Bible  which  teaches 
social  duty  throughout,  which  builds  a  Church 
which  aims  at  a  redeemed  humanity,  we  need 
not  apologize  for  seeing  in  real  humanness  the 
sign  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
We  are  not  now  concerned  with  the  progress  of 
formal  creeds.  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  that 
worship  him  must  worship  him  in  spirit.  If 
there  is  anything  in  modern  life  which  re- 
veals a  larger  spirit  toward  men  it  is  not  too 
much  to  claim  that  that  larger  spirit  has  a 
divine  source. 

127 


IV 
THE   ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

THERE  is  a  widespread  feeling  to-day  that 
the  past  twenty-five  years  have  seen  a  marked 
advance  in  the  moral  spirit  of  Christian  lands. 
In  our  own  country  especially  it  has  been  said 
that  ethical  change  has  been  very  pronounced, 
at  some  periods  making  strides  ahead  with 
a  force  which  might  almost  be  called  the  force 
of  an  ethical  revivalism.  We  would  do  well 
to  be  on  our  guard  against  any  such  sweeping 
claims.  Man  for  man  and  group  for  group, 
we  may  well  ask  ourselves  if  we  are  really  any 
better  than  were  our  fathers.  To  use  the  old 
expression,  if  we  are  to  be  as  good  as  our 
fathers,  we  must  be  better.  We  are  under  the 
obligation  to  increase  with  every  possible  de- 
velopment. Considering  the  forces  that  make 
for  material  and  intellectual  betterment,  we 
have  to  ask  ourselves  if  the  moral  forces  which 
work  in  us  and  through  us  are  keeping  pace 
with  these  material  anl  intellectual  forces. 
Are  we  making  the  advance  in  moral  life  in 
our  time  that  our  fathers  made  in  theirs? 

128 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

This  essay  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  discus- 
sion in  moral  philosophy.  It  aims  simply  at 
showing  the  stress  in  general  thought  to-day 
upon  some  phases  of  ethical  spirit  which  in- 
dicate progress.  Especially  does  it  aim  at 
calling  up  the  elements  in  our  ethical  thinking 
which  seem  to  make  for  faith  in  religious  be- 
liefs. 

It  is  cause  for  congratulation  that  there  is 
at  present  both  in  philosophical  and  popular 
ethical  thinking  such  substantial  agreement 
on  what  constitutes  the  chief  good.  The  chief 
good  has  been  discussed  ever  since  men  began 
to  discuss  ethics,  and  the  results  have  been 
confused  and  confusing.  One  school  has 
found  the  chief  good  in  pleasure,  another  in 
the  pursuit  of  duty  for  its  own  sake,  another 
in  self-realization,  another  in  self-renuncia- 
tion. The  definitions  of  terms  like  "pleasure," 
"duty,"  "realization,"  "renunciation"  have 
themselves  been  numerous  and  various.  To- 
day, however,  there  is  rather  remarkable  agree- 
ment that  a  vast  deal  of  such  discussion  is 
barren  and  unfruitful.  The  term  we  hear 
most  often  in  ethical  discussion  is  "life."  Our 
preceding  essays  have  insisted  that  in  modern 
philosophical  and  social  theories  the  accent 
is  put  upon  life  as  having  an  inherent  right  of 

129 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

way.  But  life  is  a  broad  and  general  term, 
and  we  must  come  down  to  "lives."  The  indi- 
vidual lives  of  men  and  women  and  children 
are  the  goods  which  stand  in  their  own  right 
and  the  chief  good  is  these  lives  living  out 
their  highest  and  best  possibilities.  Of  course 
when  we  use  the  term  "highest  and  best"  the 
debate  begins  to  rage  again,  but  it  is  some- 
thing to  have  discerned  that  the  good  in  this 
world  is  that  which  is  good  for  human  lives, 
and  not  something  which  exists  in  and  for 
itself  in  abstraction  from  the  concrete  lives 
around  us.  The  good  is  a  good  life — not 
virtue  for  its  own  sake  or  happiness  or  any- 
thing abstract.  A  good  man  is  an  end  in 
himself. 

Further,  there  is  a  fairly  universal  agree- 
ment to-day  that  the  good  man  does  not  be- 
come a  good  man  by  just  trying  to  be  good. 
He  does  not  become  good  by  making  goodness 
an  object  in  itself  or  by  pursuing  an  abstract 
righteousness.  He  does  not  reach  the  highest 
and  best  by  thinking  about  himself.  He, 
rather,  finds  life  himself  by  trying  to  find 
life  for  others.  The  thought  and  purpose  must 
be  outward.  A  man's  own  righteousness  is  a 
sort  of  reflex  or  by-product  which  comes  out 
of  his  attempt  to  help  others.  The  social  or- 

130 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

ganism  is  not  a  thing  in  itself,  but  it  is  a 
mighty  instrument  in  helping  the  individuals 
who  compose  it  to  be  good  in  themselves.  The 
growth  of  what  we  call  the  social  conscious- 
ness has  helped  us  to  this  insight  into  the 
method  by  which  life  comes  to  us. 

Still  further,  we  can  be  thankful  for  the 
fact  that  we  hear  such  emphasis  upon  con- 
science as  the  very  heart  of  moral  life.  Much 
popular  teaching  upon  fundamental  moral 
issues  is  off  the  track  and  some  even  seems 
perverted ;  but  all,  or  almost  all,  teaching  is  in 
the  name  of  conscience.  Conscience  is  claimed 
for  some  queer,  aberrant  conduct,  but  it  is  at 
least  significant  that  the  word  "conscience"  is 
in  all  quarters  claimed  as  the  vital  and  signifi- 
cant word.  He  would  be  a  hardy  ethical 
teacher  who  would  arise  and  declare  that  men 
ought  to  disregard  and  flout  behests  of  con- 
science. A  teacher  might  well  say  that  the 
uninstructed  conscience,  or  the  morbid  con- 
science, or  the  popular  conscience,  or  the  con- 
ventional conscience  ought  to  be  disregarded, 
but  he  would  hardly  dare  teach  that  a  man 
ought  to  turn  deliberately  against  his  own 
mature  thought  of  what  is  right.  Conscience 
is,  indeed,  used  in  most  unconscientious  ways, 
but  we  can  hardly  think  that  a  moral  school 

131 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

teaching  the  open  disregard  of  conscience 
would  win  many  converts. 

As  we  look  at  some  present-day  demands 
upon  that  inner  spirit  which  is  the  heart  of 
the  moral  life  we  repeat  that  we  are  not  espe- 
cially concerned  as  to  how  these  demands 
have  come  about.  We  certainly  do  not  think 
that  in  all  cases  the  new  sense  of  obligation 
springs  up  within  the  heart  of  the  obligated 
man  of  its  own  movement.  In  one  man  the 
assumption  of  obligation  may  thus  mark  the 
spontaneous  development  of  the  moral  life. 
In  another  man  the  obligation  may  be  more 
like  a  demand  from  without  or  a  law  imposed 
by  an  external  authority.  But  the  new  sense 
of  obligation  is  in  somebody's  mind,  and  the 
somebodies  are  numerous,  numerous  enough 
to  give  the  public  moral  spirit  of  our  day  a 
well-defined  stamp.  Whether  individuals  ac- 
cept these  obligations  willingly  or  unwillingly, 
the  obligations  are  here.  They  are  here  as  the 
expression  of  real  conscience  and  they  voice 
real  moral  insight. 

We  begin  by  calling  attention  to  the  vigor- 
ous sense  of  the  obligations  of  power  to-day. 
A  doctrine  more  and  more  generally  accepted 
is  that  the  possession  of  power  imposes  obli- 
gations on  the  possessor.  We  might  in  a  sense 

132 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

call  the  struggle  to  get  this  doctrine  into  the 
popular  consciousness  a  sort  of  continuation 
of  the  struggle  against  the  divine  right  of 
kings.  The  slightest  acquaintance  with  his- 
tory helps  us  to  realize  that  the  fight  against 
the  divine  right  came  because  of  the  unwill- 
ingness of  rulers  to  admit  that  their  power 
carried  with  it  any  real  responsibility.  The 
king  felt  at  liberty  to  follow  out  any  whim 
that  might  come  into  his  mind.  The  succes- 
sive movements  toward  popular  government 
have  not  come  just  because  the  people  have 
been  enamored  of  the  dream  of  democracy. 
The  movements  have  come  because  the  people 
have  felt  that  the  kings  have  not  ruled  with 
a  sense  of  responsibility.  If  the  kings  had 
ruled  well,  it  is  not  likely  that  there  would 
have  been  movements  toward  democracy  so 
early  in  the  course  of  history.  There  does  not 
seem  to  be  anything  inherently  repellent  to 
the  human  mind  in  the  thought  of  monarchy. 
Let  the  king  take  his  work  with  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility, and  in  some  quarters  even  to-day 
the  kingdom  seems  to  stand  fast.  But  the 
real  question  is  as  to  whether  any  man  can 
have  a  sense  of  obligation  to  his  people  strong 
enough  to  entitle  him  to  a  kingship.  If  a  man 
is  to  be  a  king,  his  sense  of  obligation  must 

133 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

be  unspeakably  strong.  The  very  fact  that 
the  powers  are  in  his  hand  puts  obligation 
upon  him  beyond  all  possibility  of  estimate. 
Even  in  these  days  of  limited  monarchy  the 
question,  we  repeat,  is  as  to  whether  any  man 
can  adequately  feel  these  obligations  or  dis- 
charge them  if  he  does  feel  them.  The  objec- 
tion to  kings  in  our  day  might  be  put  into  the 
form  of  a  statement  that  the  obligations  are 
so  heavy  that  we  cannot  think  of  asking  any 
single  human  being  to  assume  them. 

We  get  further  illustration  of  the  force  of 
this  same  emphasis  on  the  sense  of  obligation 
when  we  think  of  the  responsibilities  that  a 
military  leader  would  have  to  assume  even  in 
a  democracy  going  to  war.  In  a  previous 
essay  we  spoke  of  the  triumphs  of  our  democ- 
racy in  the  strain  of  a  terrible  war,  but  such 
triumph  means  that  sooner  or  later  vast  re- 
sponsibilities must  be  placed  in  the  hands  of 
individual  generals.  Of  course  when  a  pop- 
ular government  votes  for  a  war  the  underly- 
ing responsibility  is  with  the  voters,  but  the 
responsibilities  on  the  generals  are  stupen- 
dous. Possibly  the  darkest  single  charge  ever 
made  against  Napoleon  was  that  which  de- 
clared that  he  once  ordered  a  perfectly  useless 
assault  just  to  satisfy  the  desire  of  a  party  of 

134 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

friends  to  see  a  little  of  actual  war.  Whether 
Napoleon  was  guilty  or  not  we  do  not  pretend 
to  say.  We  can,  however,  understand  the  re- 
morselessness  of  the  criticism  of  those  who 
believe  the  charge  to  be  true.  Anything  more 
cynically  base  than  such  an  order  would  be 
hard  to  conceive.  We  can  understand  also 
the  criticism  passed  on  that  other  leader  who 
was  reported  to  have  said  that  he  was  going 
forth  to  war  with  a  light  heart.  Think  of  the 
obligations  that  the  leader  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  soldiers  must  assume!  His 
slightest  moves  mean  death  to  scores  and  per- 
haps to  hundreds.  One  objection  raised 
against  kingship  can  likewise  be  raised 
against  war.  If  a  great  war  is  to  be  success- 
ful, it  must  come  into  the  hands  of  a  single 
man.  Unity  of  command  is  essential  to  suc- 
cess. But  how  rare  must  be  the  man  who  can 
feel  the  obligations  of  such  leadership !  Here, 
again,  the  question  is  as  to  whether  any  such 
man  could  be  found.  In  any  case,  modern 
thought  has  taken  all  the  lightheartedness  out 
of  our  attitude  toward  war.  The  great  hero 
of  war  has  to  be  the  general  and  his  heroism 
has  to  be  the  devotion  to  obligations  so  heavy 
that  we  may  well  ask  if  any  man  should  be 
allowed  to  assume  them. 

135 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

But  the  political  power  to-day  has  passed 
away  from  the  kings  to  the  citizens.  We  hear 
as  never  before  the  responsibility  of  the  ordi- 
nary voter,  for  the  vote  means  power  and  power 
carries  with  it  obligation.  Accordingly,  we 
hear  that  more  than  a  merely  property  or  edu- 
cational test  is  necessary  if  a  man  is  to  be  a 
good  citizen.  Of  course  the  man  who  has 
property  is  apt  to  have  achieved  some 
moral  strength  in  the  gaining  of  the  property, 
and  the  man  who  knows  enough  to  read  is 
likely  to  know  more  about  moral  distinctions 
than  the  illiterate  man,  but,  after  all,  the 
urgent  stress  to-day  is  upon  the  need  of  the 
sense  of  obligation.  We  hear  much  about  the 
man  who  will  sell  his  vote,  but  such  men  are, 
when  the  large  number  of  voters  are  taken 
into  account,  very  rare.  Such  men  can  be 
dealt  with  by  the  police  and  by  the  courts. 
The  man  whom  we  need  to  keep  constantly  be- 
fore us  is  the  man  who  takes  into  his  hand  so 
mighty  an  instrument  as  the  ballot  and  uses  it 
without  proper  sense  of  obligation.  We  have 
had  many  good  things  to  say  of  democracy, 
and  our  faith  in  the  people  is  not  small,  but 
the  danger  in  democracy  is  that  power  will  be 
used  without  proper  sense  of  obligation.  We 
do  not  have  to  believe  that  there  is  any  neces- 

136 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

sary  and  inherent  right  of  the  people  to  rule 
before  we  can  regard  ourselves  as  good  demo- 
crats. We  have  only  to  believe  that  the  people 
can  rule  better  than  can  individuals  to  be 
democrats.  We  believe  that  the  people  can 
thus  rule,  but  we  may  well  be  glad  that  we 
hear  so  often  that  rule  by  the  people  is  only 
an  experiment,  after  all.  The  people  must 
rule  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  if  they  are 
to  rule  successfully.  They  must  be  willing  to 
assume  the  obligations  of  power  as  well  as 
the  power  itself.  Among  these  obligations 
must  always  be  included  the  duty  of  looking 
facts  squarely  in  the  face,  of  distrusting  great 
outbursts  of  emotionalism,  of  standing  for  the 
doctrine  that  a  thing  is  not  settled  until  it  is 
settled  aright.  In  the  midst  of  all  present-day 
signs  of  restlessness  which  now  and  again  seem 
to  point  toward  revolution  it  is  well  for  us  to 
remember  that,  on  the  whole,  the  people  seem 
to  have  a  wholesome  regard  for  the  checks 
upon  popular  excitement.  Very  few  popular 
assemblies  will  ignore  the  simpler  and  clearer 
rules  of  parliamentary  procedure;  very  few 
will  violate  the  requirements  of  fair  play ;  very 
few  will  trample  upon  the  rights  of  a  minority. 
By  the  way,  one  of  the  clearest  indications  of 
a  healthy  moral  spirit  in  society  is  this  re- 
is? 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

spect  for  the  rights  of  the  minority.  A  mi- 
nority is  even  being  looked  upon  as  essential 
to  the  proper  movement  of  a  democracy.  The 
old  doctrine  that  government  exists  for  the 
sake  of  whatever  majority  happens  to  win  is 
about  gone.  There  is  even  less  emphasis  than 
there  once  was  on  the  doctrine  of  the  greatest 
good  to  the  greatest  number.  More  and  more 
we  hear  that  the  proper  aim  of  government  is 
the  best,  under  the  circumstances,  for  all.  And 
this  means  an  increasing  sense  of  obligation 
on  the  part  of  the  people.  When  the  "ins" 
have  their  way  they  have  only  the  advantage 
of  certain  strategic  positions.  The  "outs"  are 
not  out  in  the  sense  that  they  are  out  of  the 
game.  Even  when  they  are  out  they  are  an 
essential  element.  There  is  to-day  a  growing 
popular  recognition  of  the  truth  that  victory 
for  a  majority  does  not  dispose  of  the  minority 
which  loses.  The  minority  is  not  a  foe  which 
is  to  be  annihilated  or  taken  prisoner.  The  mi- 
nority is  for  the  moment  just  the  weaker  of  two 
forces  which,  working  upon  each  other,  bring 
about  a  certain  resultant.  Advances  of  popu- 
lar thought  are  seldom  straight  forward  in  a 
direct  path.  The  advance  of  a  majority  can- 
not be  stopped  or  turned  back  upon  itself  by 
the  action  of  a  minority,  but  it  can  be  de- 

138 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

fleeted  far  to  one  side  of  the  course  which  it 
might  otherwise  have  taken.  It  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  mutual  duties  by  "ins"  and  "outs" 
which  is  one  of  the  encouraging  signs  as  we 
think  of  the  immense  power  which  the  ballot 
puts  in  the  hands  of  the  voters. 

But,  after  all,  the  monarchical  principle 
comes  back  upon  us,  even  after  we  have  given 
the  vote  to  the  individual  citizen.  The  citizen 
to-day  is,  indeed,  a  ruler  of  mighty  force,  but 
the  monarchical  principle  is  illustrated  on  a 
vast  scale  in  the  industrial  realm.  We  have 
to  deal  with  real  kings  in  the  realm  of  industry 
— railroad  kings,  corn  kings,  corporation 
kings.  It  was  once  said  of  a  railroad  magnate 
that  he  had  conquered  more  territory  with  a 
coupling  pin  than  Julius  Caesar  had  won  with 
the  sword.  The  days  when  these  kings  could 
act  according  to  their  own  sweet  will — a  will 
which  often  proved  bitter  enough  to  those  who 
stood  in  their  way — are  fast  disappearing.  So 
much  power  must  necessarily  be  lodged  in  the 
hands  of  such  leaders  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
obligations  of  power  are  preached  to  them 
with  urgent  insistence.  In  the  old  days — days 
not  so  very  far  in  the  past — a  railroad  king 
could  set  up  or  pull  down  a  community  or  a 
city  with  a  stroke  of  his  pen  through  a  schedule 

139 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

of  freight  rates.  He  could  divert  the  currents 
of  trade  from  their  accustomed  channels.  He 
could  stop  the  mill  wheels  and  literally  make 
the  grass  grow  in  the  streets  of  the  cities. 
Without  military  resources  he  could  really 
levy  tribute  from  millions  of  people  as  truly 
as  if  he  had  started  armies  to  marching  to- 
ward them.  He  could  rebate  a  city  into  deso- 
lation almost  as  effectively  as  a  general  could 
starve  it  by  siege.  Now,  all  this  power  is  just 
as  truly  in  the  hands  of  the  railroads  to-day, 
but  it  will  never  be  exercised  as  in  the  past. 
Laws  will  do  their  part,  commissions  will  do 
their  part,  public  opinion  will  do  its  part.  We 
may  be  permitted  to  believe,  however,  that  by 
no  means  the  least  effective  force  in  bringing 
about  the  result  has  been  and  will  be  the  grow- 
ing adoption  of  the  doctrine  that  power  means 
obligation,  and  that  the  power  belongs  only 
to  those  whose  development  in  conscience  has 
kept  pace  with  their  development  in  skill  over 
materials  and  men. 

Even  the  possession  of  money — since  money 
is  power — brings  with  it  responsibilities  em- 
phasized to-day  with  new  force.  Money  is  a 
tool  and  must  be  used  as  a  tool.  Professor 
Carver  has  suggested  that  the  meaning  of  the 
parable  of  Jesus  about  the  talents  is  to  be 

140 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

understood  from  the  viewpoint  of  wealth  as  an 
instrument.  If  the  talents  were  mere  good 
things  to  be  enjoyed,  we  can  understand  the 
protest  when  the  talent  was  taken  from  the 
man  who  had  only  one  talent  and  given  to  the 
man  who  had  ten.  If,  however,  the  talents 
were  to  be  regarded  as  instruments,  there  was 
only  justice  in  taking  the  instrument  from  the 
hands  of  him  who  could  not  use  it  and  giving 
it  to  him  who  could.  Of  course  wealth  is  an 
end  to  a  certain  extent,  but  only  to  a  certain 
extent.  For  the  most  part,  it  is  an  instru- 
ment to  be  used  with  a  sense  of  obligation  for 
the  best  things;  and  the  best  things,  as  we 
have  tried  to  show,  are  human  lives.  There  is 
a  growing  protest  against  a  rich  man's  leaving 
money  at  his  death  to  those  who  are  apt  to  use 
it  as  an  end  in  itself.  Assuming  that  the  prin- 
cipal of  a  great  estate  is  to  be  kept  intact,  there 
is  a  growing  objection  to  its  being  so  disposed 
of  by  the  legacy  of  its  owner  that  the  interest 
is  to  go  to  those  who  will  enjoy  money  as  an 
end  in  itself.  Back  of  the  objection  is  this 
realization  of  wealth  as  an  instrument.  The 
wealth  is  more  likely  to  be  used  as  an  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  the  trustees  of  a  school 
or  a  hospital  or  an  orphange  than  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  are  thinking  of  enjoyment.  By  a 


i» 

141 


THE    INCBEASE    OF    FAITH 

right  as  of  eminent  domain  wealth  belongs 
properly  in  the  hands  of  those  who  can  devote 
it  to  the  most  productive  use.  All  this  has 
been  known  from  the  beginning,  but  we  are 
insisting  to-day  upon  such  definition  of  the  ex- 
pression "productive  use"  as  shall  include  the 
highest  and  best  welfare  of  the  lives  that  the 
money  touches  either  in  the  making  or  the 
spending.  The  tools  of  modern  industrial  life 
are  so  powerful  for  good  or  for  evil  that  we 
must  allow  them  to  get  only  into  the  hands  of 
men  who  will  use  them  with  a  sense  of  obliga- 
tion. Industrial  forces  are  set  to  work  by  the 
slightest  pulls  on  triggers  or  levers.  Con- 
scienceless fingers  must  not  touch  the  triggers. 
This  sense  of  obligation  is  going  still  further. 
There  are  some  qualifications  of  men  in  the 
way  of  inborn  talents  which  are  really  mo- 
nopoly powers.  No  one  else  has  such  talents — 
it  may  be — and  the  talents  are  not  to  be  al- 
lowed to  go  to  waste.  Possibilities  of  influenc- 
ing one's  fellow  men,  capabilities  for  unusual 
work,  even  artistic  skill — all  these  are  gifts 
which  partake  of  the  nature  of  monopolies. 
A  monopoly  even  of  this  kind  carries  its  obli- 
gations. There  must  be  serious  consideration 
of  how  the  talent  can  be  best  developed  and 
best  used  after  it  is  developed.  This  too  has 

142 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

been  known  from  the  beginning,  but  the  obliga- 
tion is  receiving  new  emphasis.  The  placing 
of  the  life  is  as  important  as  the  development. 
If  we  may  use  an  expression  from  political 
economy,  a  man  is  under  obligation  not  to 
work  too  much  against  the  law  of  diminishing 
returns.  "The  law  of  diminishing  returns" 
means  that  after  a  certain  point  the  returns 
from  effort  are  not  commensurate  with  the 
effort  put  forth  to  obtain  them.  Then,  if  there 
are  other  fields  where  the  same  amount  of 
effort  will  bring  a  larger  return,  the  obliga- 
tion is  to  cultivate  those  fields.  We  are  not 
at  present  directly  concerned  with  missionary 
enterprises,  but,  for  the  sake  of  illustration, 
we  may  ask  as  to  the  wisdom  of  sending  one 
hundred  teachers  into  America  when  the  one 
hundred  can  do  but  little  more  than  ninety 
could ;  the  extra  ten  could  accomplish  as  much 
in  China  just  now  as  the  ninety  can  here.  We 
do  not  pretend  to  pick  our  figures  with  mathe- 
matical care,  but  the  question  is  suggestive. 
Jesus  once  raised  the  issue  as  to  the  morality 
of  refusing  to  place  a  candle  where  its  light 
would  do  the  most  good.  In  our  day  we  see 
the  obligation  of  paying  our  way  and  of  so 
placing  our  lives  that  they  will  pay  the  largest 
return. 

143 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

This  modern  spirit  does  away  at  once  with 
the  old  heresy  that  a  man's  life  is  his  own 
affair,  and  that  he  can  make  his  choices  as  he 
pleases.  More  and  more  we  see  that  the  obli- 
gation to  society  reaches  into  the  inner  depths. 
If  a  man  will  not  be  conscientious  even  in 
those  things  which  do  not  at  first  seem  to 
affect  the  welfare  of  society,  we  speedily  find 
ways  of  trying  to  establish  a  connection  be- 
tween his  conduct  and  the  welfare  of  society. 
If  a  man  could  withdraw  to  some  Kobinson 
Crusoe  island,  making  no  drafts  on  society 
and  living  out  of  all  communication  with  men, 
we  might  find  something  to  say  in  justification 
of  letting  him  go  to  the  devil  in  his  own  style. 
But  the  ethical  spirit  of  to-day  will  not  hear 
of  a  man's  going  to  the  devil  through  indul- 
gence in  vice  with  the  plea  that  vice  is  a  pri- 
vate affair.  Opium-smoking  is  a  distinctly 
private  vice,  but  we  have  seen  it  nearly  ruin  a 
nation.  The  simple  obligation  to  pay  one's 
way  means  more  with  the  increase  of  moral 
understanding.  Every  man  whose  working 
efficiency  is  impaired  below  a  certain  point  is 
a  charge  on  other  men.  Such  a  man  must  be 
shouldered  and  carried,  or  some  one  else  must 
pull  his  weight  or  pay  his  fare.  In  a  world 
where  struggle  for  life  is  hard  enough  at  the 

144 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

easiest,  moral  sense  rebels  at  the  injustice 
wrought  through  the  failure  of  individuals  to 
play  their  part  as  men.  Being  a  man  means 
keeping  off  the  shoulders  of  other  men.  And 
as  to  going  to  the  devil  in  one's  own  way,  even 
if  all  the  expenses  are  paid  by  the  one  who 
thus  goes,  even  if  there  is  no  loss  to  anyone  but 
the  man  himself,  and  the  man's  going  is  a 
good  riddance,  still  the  spectacle  of  man's  go- 
ing to  the  devil  is  not  helpful,  for  long  before 
he  has  gone  from  this  world  the  devil  is  in 
such  complete  possession  as  to  affect  the  on- 
lookers. The  presence  of  evil  in  a  human  life 
is  not  socially  profitable.  Even  when  evil  men 
can  be  pointed  to  as  examples  of  the  outwork- 
ing of  moral  law  the  exhibition  costs  more 
than  it  is  worth.  Social  obligation  reaches  to 
the  innermost  realms  of  individual  life. 

We  have  spoken  of  to-day's  attitude  toward 
the  obligations  of  power.  We  may  find  further 
illustration  of  the  same  spirit  in  the  emphasis 
on  the  obligations  of  knowledge.  Knowledge 
itself  is  a  power. 

We  all  know  the  obligation  on  the  man  who 
can  see  farther  than  his  fellows  or  can  grasp 
an  ideal  with  firmer  certainty  than  can  his 
fellows.  The  emphasis  upon  the  obligation  of 
such  a  man  to  live  up  to  the  highest  light  is 

145 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

not  new,  but  it  is  well  for  us  to  remember  that 
the  opportunities  for  heroism  of  this  sort  are 
as  actual  to-day  as  ever,  though  possibly  less 
spectacular.  The  opportunities  come  in  the 
minor  social  groups — industrial,  political, 
ecclesiastical.  The  reason  why  the  heroism 
does  not  attract  great  attention  is  to  be  found 
in  the  thought  that  if  a  man  cannot  get  along 
comfortably  in  one  of  these  groups,  he  can  go 
out.  There  is  plenty  of  room  outside.  But 
this  is  very  easy  to  say.  Here  is  a  man  who 
has  trained  himself  to  a  particular  task.  He 
is  known  to  hold  and  to  advocate  views  which 
are  not  agreeable  to  the  company  for  which 
he  works.  He  is  an  official  of  a  transportation 
company,  it  may  be,  and  a  campaign  is  on 
against  the  saloon  forces  in  a  city  through 
which  this  transportation  company  runs.  The 
official  receives  a  hint  from  headquarters  that 
while  he  is  free  to  vote  as  he  pleases  the  com- 
pany does  not  expect  its  officials  to  take  active 
part  against  the  saloon.  If  the  official  speaks 
out  after  such  a  hint,  he  does  so  at  more  of  a 
risk  than  that  run  by  all  the  agitators  in  the 
town.  The  official  is  qualified  to  do  a  particu- 
lar kind  of  work.  He  may  not  be  able  to  find 
work  of  just  that  kind  anywhere  else  than  in 
the  employ  of  that  particular  company.  Too 

146 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

much  honor  cannot  be  given  under  such  cir- 
cumstances to  the  man  of  superior  insight  into 
the  worth  of  an  ideal  who  realizes  and  acts 
upon  the  obligations  which  the  insight  puts 
upon  him.  Or,  to  take  a  further  illustration : 
here  is  a  minister  or  a  teacher  enlisted  in  the 
ranks  of  one  of  the  great  ecclesiastical  de- 
nominations. He  feels  that  he  must  advocate 
improvements  in  doctrinal  statement  or  church 
polity.  Some  leader  advises  him  that  his  place 
is  outside.  If  the  change  which  he  advocates 
is  subversive  of  the  aims  for  which  the  de- 
nomination stands,  or  if  it  is  hostile  to  the 
essential  spirit  of  that  body,  the  man's  place  is 
outside.  But  if  the  change  is  one  called  for  by 
the  development  of  the  body  itself,  the  obliga- 
tion is  upon  the  servant  of  the  Church  to  stay 
in  and  speak  his  mind.  If  he  does  stay  he 
runs  a  risk.  He  may  incur  the  disfavor  of 
church  leaders,  either  ecclesiastical  or  lay,  and 
his  own  advancement  may  suffer.  The  most 
carefully  guarded  and  moderate  statement 
from  such  a  man  may  mean  more  than  the 
most  radical  utterances  of  the  man  outside  or 
of  the  member  of  the  professedly  radical  com- 
munions. We  need  liberal  bodies  of  believers, 
but  there  is  no  reason  for  calling  the  liberal 
utterances  of  bands  of  liberals  especially 

147 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

heroic.  If  a  man  cares  to  be  heroic  with  radi- 
cals, let  him  preach  conservatism  to  them.  We 
mention  these  illustrations  simply  to  bring 
out  the  truth  that  there  is  abundant  oppor- 
tunity to  assume  to-day  the  obligations  which 
go  with  the  knowledge  of  high  ideals.  And 
we  speak  with  knowledge  of  fact  and  not  out 
of  merely  enthusiastic  optimism  when  we  say 
that  in  the  industrial  and  ecclesiastical  and 
political  groups  there  appears  to  be  increas- 
ing willingness  to  assume  the  obligations 
which  go  with  knowledge  of  commanding 
ideals. 

But  there  is  increasingly  general  recogni- 
tion also  of  the  obligations  imposed  by  the 
possession  of  more  matter-of-fact  and  prosaic 
knowledge  than  the  knowledge  of  high  ideals. 
We  have  spoken  elsewhere  of  the  demands 
upon  the  possessor  of  scientific  knowledge. 
Of  course  some  treatment  of  the  owner  of 
great  ideas  to-day  is  little  short  of  outrageous. 
Property  in  almost  everything  else  is  recog- 
nized and  protected  better  than  property  in 
ideas.  But  even  though  this  is  lamentably 
true  the  scientific  ideal  is  that  beneficial  facts 
become  at  discovery  the  property  of  humanity. 
If  a  scientist  could  discover  some  inevitably 
certain  method  of  dealing  directly  with  the 

148 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

germs  of  typhoid  or  tuberculosis,  all  right- 
thinking  men  would  agree  that  such  a  dis- 
coverer should  be  suitably  rewarded,  but  all 
scientists  would  recognize  the  duty  of  making 
the  facts  public  property  as  soon  as  possible. 
There  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  obligation 
here. 

Moreover,  society  in  general  is  taking  upon 
itself  more  and  more  cheerfully  the  responsi- 
bility for  the  discharge  of  obligations  which 
come  with  increasing  knowledge.  The  use  of 
the  scientific  method  has  revealed  to  us  the 
laws  by  which  even  moral  evils  get  their  foot- 
hold in  the  world.  We  have  come  to  a  new 
conviction  as  to  the  remediableness  of  moral 
situations,  but  the  remedies  lie  more  and  more 
in  the  field  of  prevention.  The  urgency  with 
which  preventive  measures  are  pushed  upon 
the  public  to-day  and  the  increasing  readiness 
with  which  the  new  view  is  accepted  are  mar- 
velous. There  is  nothing  spectacular  about  a 
work  of  prevention.  Here  is  a  village  in 
danger  through  the  use  of  wells  placed  too 
near  the  dwelling  houses.  It  may  be  that 
there  never  has  been  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  in 
that  village.  On  the  chance  that  there  may  be 
an  epidemic  the  wells  are  abandoned  and  an 
expensive  water  system  is  installed.  It  is 

149 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

always  possible  for  the  reactionary  to  say  that 
nothing  would  have  happened  if  the  old  wells 
had  been  kept  open.  Now,  in  less  material 
manifestations  this  new  spirit  is  abroad  in  the 
land.  There  is  more  and  more  general  re- 
sponse to  the  obligations  which  come  with  the 
very  knowledge  of  the  ways  in  which  moral 
disorders  may  be  prevented.  The  protests 
against  the  overcrowding  of  houses  and  the 
overstrain  of  weak  wills  and  against  all  ma- 
terial and  spiritual  conditions  which  practi- 
cally rob  the  human  will  of  its  freedom  are 
instances  in  point.  Now  that  public  opinion 
is  aware  of  the  causes  of  some  evils,  there  is 
increasing  restlessness  in  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  the  evils.  The  knowledge  increases 
that  sorrow  which  cannot  be  abated  till  the 
obligation  which  comes  with  the  knowledge  is 
satisfied. 

Under  all  this  is  the  sense  of  obligation 
which  arises  from  the  knowledge  that  what 
might  be  called  constitutional  morality  is 
woven  into  the  very  texture  of  the  universe. 
That  is  to  say,  the  laws  which  pick  up  the  evil 
deed  and  carry  it  out  to  endless  consequences 
are  seen  to  be  remorseless  in  their  ongoings. 
There  are  laws  which  work  for  the  relief  of 
the  evildoer  who  sets  himself  to  work  with 

150 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

them,  but  these  laws  never  completely  undo 
an  evil  deed.  Bodies  are  scarred  and  souls  are 
marked  with  the  evil.  Great  achievements  no 
doubt  are  possible  to  the  life  which  has  for- 
saken sin,  but  present-day  moral  insight  will 
not  tolerate  the  doctrine  that  the  soul  which 
has  sinned  can  be  as  good  as  if  it  had  never 
sinned.  Modern  morality  is  increasingly  im- 
patient with  any  doctrine  which  obscures  the 
deadliness  of  sin.  The  growing  realization  of 
this  means  increasing  civilization.  The  po- 
litical economist  tells  us  that  civilization  ad- 
vances as  men  "learn  to  discount  the  future 
at  a  low  rate  of  interest" — as  they  learn  to 
put  some  far-off  morrow  on  about  the  same 
plane  as  to-day.  We  are  learning  anew  that 
though  God  may  not  always  pay  on  Saturday, 
he  nevertheless  pays.  There  is  no  healthier 
moral  realization  than  just  this,  especially 
when  the  obligation  which  comes  with  the 
realization  is  assumed.  The  laws  do  not  slip 
and  they  do  not  forget. 

Lest,  however,  we  may  seem  to  have  painted 
a  system  of  unrelenting  sternness,  we  call  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  the  increasing  knowl- 
edge of  actual  situations  is  bringing  a  chari- 
tableness into  moral  judgments  which  is  of 
significance.  In  a  sense,  our  knowledge  of 

151 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

men  has  increased.  We  see  more  clearly  the 
springs  of  moral  action.  Irrevocable  as  are  the 
laws  of  the  universe,  they  are  not  to  be  con- 
ceived of  as  working  in  the  same  fashion  upon 
the  unintentional  evildoer  as  upon  the  delib- 
erate transgressor.  If  the  effects  of  evildoing 
were  chiefly  and  primarily  upon  the  body  it 
would  be  true  that  an  evil  done  in  ignorance 
would  receive  the  same  penalty  as  wrong  com- 
mitted intentionally.  The  laws  of  the  body 
carry  on  the  results  of  sincere  mistakes  and 
deliberate  sins  alike.  We  are  not  thinking 
especially,  however,  of  the  physical  evils. 
These  are  the  most  easily  remedied.  We  are 
thinking  of  sins  of  the  spirit — rejections  of 
the  truth  and  choices  of  the  evil.  It  is  here 
that  sin  is  most  deadly.  The  mind  which  turns 
against  the  light  loses  its  power  to  know  the 
light.  In  this  inner  realm,  however,  we  feel 
more  and  more  the  need  of  charity.  We  are 
learning  that  the  moral  task  for  the  human 
life  is  to  make  the  passage  over  from  the 
merely  natural  to  the  spiritual,  or,  rather,  to 
lift  the  natural  up  to  the  plane  of  the  spiritual 
by  informing  it  with  a  right  purpose.  And  so 
we  find  many  lives  in  many  stages  of  transi- 
tion— some  having  attained  quite  nearly  to 
sainthood  and  others  making  the  first  attempts 

152 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

to  rationalize  and  spiritualize  their  impulses. 
That  deliberate  choice  of  evil  and  cynical  joy 
in  evil  are  too  common  we  all  know,  but  the 
more  closely  we  study  human  life  the  more 
clearly  we  see  that  much  which  seems  like  evil 
is  not  purposely  and  intentionally  such.  Per- 
fect intentions  may  mark  even  imperfect  lives. 
And  so  the  increasing  contact  with  men  to- 
day and  the  increasing  knowledge  of  them 
puts  on  us  the  obligation  to  profound  charity. 
Hence  it  comes  about  that  the  attitude  toward 
the  moral  problem  to-day  has  this  double  as- 
pect: insistence  upon  the  inevitableness  of 
penalty  under  the  law  and  charitableness  to- 
ward the  vast  mass  of  men  who  are  striving  to 
bring  the  moral  spirit  into  their  lives.  The 
knowledge  of  the  actual  condition  of  men  puts 
on  us  the  obligation  to  charitableness. 

Not  only  are  there  obligations  of  power  and 
of  knowledge,  but  there  are  obligations  of  sym- 
pathy emphasized  in  the  moral  messages  of  to- 
day. Any  man  who  can  sympathize  at  all 
must  feel  himself  in  these  days  under  the  obli- 
gation to  come  into  some  sort  of  personal  touch 
with  persons  who  are  in  distress.  Of  course 
any  man's  range  of  personal  contacts  is  lim- 
ited, but  there  is  good  cheer  in  any  movement 
away  from  impersonalism.  One  of  the  almost 

153 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

inevitable  vices  of  our  time  has  been  a  sort  of 
wholesaleism  in  the  treatment  of  men.  The 
wholesaleism  perhaps  took  its  start  in  indus- 
trial developments.  The  modern  stress  on 
large-scale  production  has  tended  to  obscure 
the  worth  and  meaning  of  the  individual  man. 
The  tendency  has  been  to  get  away  from  the 
thought  of  the  individual  laborer  to  the  consid- 
eration of  labor  in  the  mass.  In  such  a  system 
a  laborer  is  fortunate  if  he  is  known  even  by 
number.  Out  of  the  success  of  modern  indus- 
trialism has  come  a  copying  of  some  of  the 
features  of  industrialism  in  realms  where  they 
have  no  right.  The  demand  has  been  that  edu- 
cational and  charitable  and  industrial  institu- 
tions be  handled  with  business  methods. 
While  any  sensible  person  can  see  the  advan- 
tages of  business  methods  in  any  of  these  ac- 
tivities, there  comes  a  point  where  business 
methods  break  down  in  dealing  with  the  great 
human  relationships.  A  philanthropic  institu- 
tion may  get  on  well  enough  in  dealing  by 
wholesale  with  the  bodies  of  men,  though  there 
is  some  question  even  about  this.  The  physi- 
cian at  work  upon  an  unconscious  patient 
does  not  think  of  the  individuality  of  the  pa- 
tient, but  as  soon  as  consciousness  returns, 
and  the  task  of  nursing  begins,  the  limitations 

154 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

of  wholesale  and  card-case  methods  become 
apparent.  So  likewise  with  educational  and 
ecclesiastical  wholesaleism.  Business  methods 
in  these  fields  have  revealed  their  weakness. 
And  so  in  these  later  days  there  is  a  swing 
back  in  the  other  direction.  The  personal 
touch  is  emphasized.  In  the  schools  the 
classes  are  broken  into  small  groups  that  the 
individual  student  may  be  reached.  Personal 
contact  is  more  and  more  preached  in  the 
work  of  the  Church.  It  is  high  time  for  this 
change,  for  inipersonalism  tends  to  a  sort  of 
dehumanization.  With  the  swing  of  the  pen- 
dulum in  the  other  direction  the  old  virtues 
which  come  out  of  warm  human  sympathy 
come  to  the  old-time  regard.  This  makes  for 
faith.  The  gospel  deals  in  large  terms,  but 
not  in  wholesale  terms.  It  lays  stress  upon 
sympathy.  We  are  under  obligations  to  help 
men  with  material  things  and  with  whatever 
knowledge  may  be  at  our  disposal,  but  we  are 
under  obligations  also  to  give  of  ourselves. 
While  a  moral  command  to  'sympathize  with 
men,  given  in  a  mechanical  fashion,  would 
miss  the  mark,  the  obligation  is  to  take  such 
attitude  toward  men  that  we  shall  sympathize 
with  them.  Hence  the  condemnation  on  the 
man  who  in  giving  to  a  cause  simply  flings  his 

155 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

money  into  the  box.  More  is  called  for — 
knowledge  of  the  situation  which  demands  re- 
lief, imagination,  which  can  make  another's 
suffering  real  to  oneself.  Much  of  the  appeal 
to  imagination  to-day  is  forced  and  crude,  but 
the  appeal  is  made  and  with  great  effect.  Life 
as  we  know  it  is  inevitably  an  affair  of  the 
sensibility.  There  may  be  beings  in  some 
other  sphere  whose  life  moves  on  without  rela- 
tion to  sensibility.  Life  for  them  may  be  effec- 
tive will-exercise  with  no  accompaniment  of 
feeling  whatever.  Or  it  may  be  a  colorless 
knowing  without  any  sort  of  thrill  in  its  ex- 
pectancy or  discovery.  Such  is  not  life  as  we 
know  it.  For  us  a  great  word  is  happiness; 
and  happiness  has  no  meaning  apart  from  sen- 
sibility. Now  the  higher  the  meaning  put 
into  happiness  the  more  closely  we  come  to  the 
realm  of  personal  communion.  The  greatest 
gift  a  man  can  give  is  real  sympathy.  Like- 
wise, the  greatest  gift  a  man  can  receive  is  a 
sympathy  which  shows  that  others  are  doing 
and  thinking  and  feeling  with  him.  The  moral 
consciousness  to-day  recognizes  and  enforces 
this  truth. 

We  must  say  a  word  about  another  obliga- 
tion which  is  more  and  more  forcing  itself 
upon  the  moral  consciousness.  We  refer  to 

156 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

the  extent  to  which  the  obligations  of  belief 
are  coming  into  ethical  consideration.  There 
is  in  modern  thinking  a  very  decided  trend 
away  from  the  idea  that  religious  belief  is  not 
a  matter  of  grave  moral  consequence.  We 
once  heard  much  of  the  doctrine  that  it  makes 
little  difference  to  anyone  else  what  any  par- 
ticular man  believes.  Belief  has  so  much  to 
do  with  other-world  destiny  that  if  a  man  is 
willing  to  take  the  risks  of  the  hereafter  in 
any  belief,  the  risk  is  entirely  of  the  man's 
own  concern.  After  that  we  heard  of  the 
doctrine  that  anyone  should  be  allowed  the 
liberty  to  believe  whatever  might  agree  with 
him.  But  this  easy-going  liberalism  has  not 
to-day  the  hold  it  once  had.  The  emphasis  on 
the  social  consequences  of  belief  has  made  a 
difference.  In  some  spheres  society  assumes 
a  great  deal  of  authority,  not,  indeed,  as  to 
what  a  man  believes,  but  as  to  what  he  pub- 
lishes and  puts  into  action.  There  are  to-day 
various  beliefs  as  to  government,  for  example. 
Public  opinion  will  not  sit  quietly  by  and 
allow  beliefs  subversive  of  all  government  to 
be  proclaimed  without  protest.  And  when 
anarchy  proceeds  to  act  itself  out  into  prac- 
tical expression  the  police  take  a  hand  in  the 
argument.  The  plea  of  personal  sincerity  will 

157 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

not  avail  to  establish  a  right  to  proclaim 
anarchy.  While  no  one  could  ever  justify  him- 
self in  an  argument  for  a  return  to  censorship 
of  religious  beliefs  by  authority,  public  opin- 
ion is  recognizing  that  it  makes  a  vast  differ- 
ence to  society  as  to  what  sort  of  religious  be- 
liefs are  proclaimed.  It  is  being  discovered 
that  belief  itself  is  apt  to  make  for  fuller  life 
than  skepticism,  and  that  the  larger  beliefs 
make  for  the  larger  life.  The  better  the  belief 
the  better  the  believer  is  apt  to  be.  Moreover, 
there  are  distinct  social  consequences  of  par- 
ticular beliefs.  Take  the  great  catholic  ut- 
terances of  the  creeds  as  to  the  nature  of  God 
and  the  dignity  of  human  life.  There  may 
legitimately  be  all  variety  of  interpretation  of 
these  utterances.  The  objectors  may  urge  that 
the  Church  which  has  held  to  these  doctrines 
many  times  has  stood  in  the  way  of  human 
progress,  and  may  urge  also  that  it  has  been 
hard  to  separate  the  truths  from  doubtful  ac- 
companiments. But  the  large  good  sense  of 
constantly  increasing  numbers  is  seeing  that 
in  the  main  and  on  the  whole  these  fundamen- 
tal beliefs  are  mighty  bulwarks  of  human 
order  and  progress.  Hence  it  comes  about 
that  a  skeptic  or  an  atheist  will  support  a 
church  because  it  is  good  for  the  community, 

158 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

and  that  an  agnostic  like  the  late  Goldwin 
Smith  will,  while  avowing  that  it  is  disloyalty 
to  the  truth  for  a  man  like  Cardinal  Newman 
to  declare  assent  to  propositions  because  of 
the  consequences  of  believing  them,  deplore 
the  dawning  of  the  day  when  disbelief  in  im- 
mortality will  make  the  members  of  society 
struggle  all  the  more  bitterly  for  the  things 
of  the  present.  Now,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  any 
man  of  intellectual  integrity  would  not  sooner 
know  the  truth  no  matter  how  unpleasant  it 
might  prove  than  to  hold  to  a  false  belief  just 
because  of  consequences  pleasant  for  a  time; 
but  the  confidence  of  the  normal  man  in  reason 
is  such  that  he  feels  that  in  a  realm  where  we 
cannot  have  positive  demonstration  one  way 
or  the  other  the  fact  that  the  social  conse- 
quences of  a  belief  are  beneficial  must  be  an 
indication  that  the  belief  lays  hold  of  the 
springs  of  reality.  And  when  once  these  so- 
cial consequences  are  seen  streaming  from  be- 
lief as  effects  from  a  cause  the  social  con- 
science of  our  time  inclines  charitably  toward 
the  belief.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  a  man  who 
professes  great  sympathy  for  his  fellow  men, 
and  who  knows  that  those  fellow  men  do  not 
and  cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  can  overlook 
the  social  importance  of  the  catholic  beliefs. 

159 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  such  a  man,  having  once 
seen  these  consequences,  can  avoid  the  moral 
responsibility  of  at  least  examining  the  be- 
liefs, and  examining  them  with  charitable  pre- 
suppositions. 

We  may  properly  close  this  lecture  with  a 
brief  suggestion  as  to  the  more  direct  bearing 
of  the  obligation  to  belief  on  the  form  which 
some  Christian  beliefs  should  take.  First,  we 
urge  the  duty  of  laying  hold  on  the  best  be- 
liefs. We  can  have  any  beliefs  we  choose.  We 
are  not  in  the  realm  of  strict  demonstration. 
The  question  is  not  as  to  whether  A  or  B  can 
be  proved  by  demonstration  to  be  an  objective 
fact,  or  whether  the  formal  processes  of  rea- 
soning will  yield  a  result  thus  or  so.  If  there 
is  in  fact  or  reason  nothing  against  belief,  and 
the  great  needs  of  life  call  for  belief,  then  be- 
lief becomes  not  only  a  demand  of  reason  but 
a  behest  of  duty.  And  with  the  field  of  belief 
open  the  obligation  is  to  seek  the  best  beliefs. 
One  belief  is  not  by  any  means  necessarily  as 
good  as  another.  One  belief  is  larger  than 
another,  or  finer  than  another,  or  in  closer 
touch  with  the  facts  of  history  or  experience 
than  another,  or  more  in  harmony  with  the 
total  spiritual  nature  than  another.  If  be- 
liefs are  instruments  for  the  upbuilding  of  the 

160 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

life,  the  wise  man  searches  for  the  best  instru- 
ment. The  truth  of  belief  is  like  the  truth  of 
an  instrument;  an  instrument  is  true  when  it 
is  made  of  the  finest  obtainable  material,  when 
the  workmanship  on  it  is  honest  and  sincere, 
when  it  comes  nearest  perfection  in  accom- 
plishing its  proper  work.  Or,  more  clearly 
still,  the  truth  of  a  belief  is  like  what  we  might 
call  the  truth  of  a  food.  A  food  could  be 
called  true  if  it  is  really  a  product  containing 
the  great  elements  on  which  the  body  depends, 
and  when  it  is  so  prepared  as  to  nourish  life. 
The  body  is  a  part  of  the  physical  universe.  It 
thrives  on  the  foods  which  most  deeply  con- 
nect it  with  the  universe.  The  soul  is  a  part 
of  the  spiritual  universe.  If  it  thrives  on  be- 
liefs, it  must  do  so  because  these  beliefs  con- 
tain the  elements  out  of  which  the  spiritual 
universe  is  constituted.  But  there  are  foods 
and  foods  and  beliefs  and  beliefs.  Some  foods 
and  some  beliefs  are  clearly  more  truly  of  the 
basic  materials  of  the  universe  than  are  others 
and  some  are  more  wisely  prepared  than 
others.  A  moral  imperative  lies  back  of  the 
search  for  the  best  beliefs. 

Furthermore,  in  the  search  for  the  best  be- 
liefs the  demands  of  the  moral  life  are  to  be 
used  as  the  guiding  light.  If  we  are  to  have 

161 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

beliefs,  we  must  have  the  best  beliefs,  and  by 
best  beliefs  we  mean  the  morally  best.  It  is  in 
obedience  to  a  sure  moral  insight  that  the  his- 
tory of  theology  is  a  story  of  the  progressive 
moralization  of  theology.  As  soon  as  men 
have  attained  to  a  fresh  moral  insight  they 
have  dared  to  attribute  this  to  the  Divine 
Being  as  a  part  of  his  character.  They  have 
believed  that  these  insights  are  in  a  profound 
sense  a  part  of  the  self-revelation  of  God  to 
men.  The  story  of  the  progress  of  moral  think- 
ing is  in  any  case  interesting,  but,  as  we  have 
so  often  said,  we  are  not  especially  concerned 
with  the  precise  steps  by  which  the  insights 
come.  If  they  come  because  growing  material 
needs  or  advancing  material  prosperity  make 
demand  for  a  fuller  thought  of  God,  well  and 
good,  if  only  the  insight  stands  in  its  own 
right  after  it  does  come.  The  guiding  rule  of 
religious  thinking  might  well  be  phrased  as  an 
assumption  that  nothing  is  too  good  to  believe 
about  God. 

We  must  be  careful  as  we  follow  out  this 
leading  of  increasing  moral  insight  lest  we  be- 
come uncharitable  toward  beliefs  of  an  earlier 
day.  It  is  easy  for  us  to  speak  of  ourselves 
as  the  people  and  to  fancy  that  moral  under- 
standing will  die  with  us.  We  must  remem- 

162 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

ber  that  a  good  man  is  a  good  man  in  whatever 
age  he  lives,  that  the  central  element  in  a 
moral  character  is  a  good  will,  and  that  the 
larger  knowledge  of  ethical  values  comes  out 
of  following  the  dictates  of  good  will  toward 
the  larger  interpretations  of  increasing  knowl- 
edge. There  should  never  be  any  reflection  on 
the  ancient  saints  in  our  speech  about  growing 
moral  insight.  The  problem  is  similar  to  that 
of  our  relation  to  the  wise  men  of  other  times. 
We  know  more  than  Plato,  but  it  would 
hardly  be  a  mark  of  superior  wisdom  to  say 
that  we  are  wiser  than  Plato.  We  may  know 
more  truth  than  he  knew,  but  we  are  not  apt 
to  be  greater  lovers  of  the  truth  than  he. 
With  this  caution  before  us  we  pass  to  some 
consideration  of  the  progressive  moralization 
of  the  idea  of  God. 

Take,  now,  the  thought  of  the  increasing 
sense  of  obligation  which  obtains  in  our  day 
and  see  how  this  is  being  applied  to  our  con- 
ception of  God.  We  have  spoken  of  the  obliga- 
tions of  power.  We  are  coming  to  emphasize 
the  obligations  which  must  be  upon  one  who 
holds  in  his  hands  the  forces  of  the  universe. 
We  preach  the  obligations  of  possession.  The 
man  who  has  control  of  the  industrial  forces 
of  a  time  has  vast  obligations,  but  what  are 

163 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

these  obligations  as  compared  to  the  obliga- 
tions of  control  of  a  world?  We  insist  upon 
the  obligations  of  leadership  of  armies  or  of 
States,  but  what  are  these  responsibilities  com- 
pared to  the  responsibilities  of  creatorship? 
Human  beings  are  not  in  this  world  by  their 
own  choice.  None  of  us  had  a  vote  on  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  he  would  come  or  not.  And 
when  we  awake  to  consciousness  here  we  find 
ourselves  in  rather  a  difficult  plight.  We  are 
not  creatures  endowed  with  merely  passive 
sensibilities,  nor  are  we  able  outright  to  shape 
our  destinies.  We  have,  however,  enough 
freedom  to  make  shipwreck  possible.  We  are 
confronted  by  the  most  grievous  inequalities 
of  fortune  between  persons  and  between  dif- 
ferent periods  of  our  own  careers.  And  just 
about  the  moment  we  feel  ourselves  in  position 
to  accomplish  something  worth  while  we  are 
called  from  earth.  Say  all  we  please  about 
human  responsibility,  the  divine  responsibility 
is  greater  still.  God  must  be  looked  upon,  in 
the  light  of  our  increasing  understanding  of 
obligation,  as  the  most  obligated  Being  in  the 
universe.  If  he  has  not  the  power  to  control 
for  moral  purposes  the  forces  of  the  universe, 
he  must  stand  condemned  by  moral  reason  for 
ever  having  undertaken  such  an  enterprise  as 

164 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

the  universe.  If  he  has  the  power,  he  must  use 
it.  The  history  of  religious  thinking  shows 
that  the  moral  insight  of  the  race  has  always 
recognized  this  obligation,  each  age  express- 
ing it  in  the  language  of  its  own  time.  Accord- 
ingly, the  Almighty  has  been  conceived  of  as 
discharging  faithfully  the  obligations  which 
are  upon  him  through  the  possession  of  power. 
If  men  ever  thought  of  the  devil  as  robbed  of 
his  due  by  what  God  had  done  for  men,  they 
thought  of  God  himself  as  discharging  what- 
ever obligation  was  due  the  devil.  If  God  was 
thought  of  as  a  feudal  Lord  whose  dignity  had 
been  affronted  beyond  the  power  of  mankind 
to  make  reparation,  God  himself  must  make 
reparation.  If  any  sort  of  a  substitute  must 
pay  a  penalty  for  sin  because  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  any  offering  which  man  might  make, 
God  must  provide  the  substitute.  If  a  tribute 
must  be  paid  to  the  dignity  of  the  government 
of  the  universe  by  some  one  worthier  than 
man,  the  problem  must  be  solved  by  God  him- 
self. If  moral  influences  are  to  be  set  at  work 
for  men  by  some  force  higher  than  the  human, 
God  must  set  the  forces  to  work.  It  all  comes 
down  to  this,  in  a  word,  that  God  is  under 
obligation  to  exert  every  means  in  his  power 
to  help  men  use  aright  the  boon  of:  freedom 

.165 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

which  has  been  compulsorily  bestowed  upon 
them. 

Then  there  are  the  obligations  of  knowledge 
which  we  look  upon  as  binding  upon  God. 
While  we  insist  strenuously  that  there  must 
be  no  abatement  of  the  moral  law,  the  increase 
of  our  moral  insight  leads  us  to  larger  charity 
in  our  attitude  toward  men.  We  do  not  min- 
imize the  ill  desert  of  the  evil  will,  but  the  more 
we  know  of  men  the  more  we  are  inclined  to 
charity.  The  dependence  of  choices  upon  en- 
vironmental conditions  and  upon  hereditary 
tendencies  and  upon  the  physical  condition, 
the  limitations  which  come  with  inadequate 
knowledge  or  deficient  imagination — all  these 
deter  us  from  hasty  judgment,  especially  as 
to  the  motives  of  men.  Likewise  we  insist 
that  the  judgment  of  God  must  rest  down 
upon  full  knowledge,  that  his  attitude  can 
never  be  determined  by  anything  other  than 
the  full  light.  Hence  we  hold  ourselves  in 
readiness  to  see  many  earthly  judgments  re- 
vised and  many  verdicts  set  aside.  The  doc- 
trine that  has  in  any  other  than  a  merely  prac- 
tical sense  put  judgment  in  the  hands  of  men 
is  looked  upon  as  little  short  of  blasphemy. 
The  final  destiny  of  men  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  God  who  knows,  and  he  must  act  out 

166 


THE  ETHICAL  ADVANCE 

the  responsibilities  which  come  with  knowl- 
edge. 

Finally,  there  must  be  upon  God  the  obliga- 
tion to  sympathy.  If  we  are  to  cast  ourselves 
with  self-abandonment  into  the  work  of  up- 
lifting men,  much  more  must  he.  There 
is  no  room  in  the  moral  universe  for  a 
merely  philanthropic  God.  God  cannot  be 
looked  upon  merely  as  a  Benefactor.  He 
must  come  to  men  himself.  If  he  gives 
gifts,  he  must  be  in  the  gifts.  If  we  are  not  to 
fall  into  the  evil  of  impersonalism,  he  must 
not  fall  into  that  evil.  He  must  not  look  at 
men  as  "masses,"  or  "humanity,"  or  "man- 
kind." He  must  stand  toward  men  in  the  re- 
lation of  "Father"  and  "Friend."  He  must 
be  interested  in  men,  not  for  what  he  is  to  get 
out  of  them,  but  for  what  they  are  in  them- 
selves. If  an  obligation  of  this  sort  is  upon 
us,  it  is  much  more  upon  God.  He  must  fill 
human  life  to  the  full  with  his  sympathy. 

It  is  from  the  standpoint  of  this  manifold 
obligation  that  we  must  approach  the  moral 
basis  of  the  incarnation.  The  glory  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  incarnation  is  that  God  has  freely 
taken  the  burden  of  human  life  upon  his  own 
heart.  But  it  does  not  detract  from  this  glory 
to  teach  that  this  free  gift  of  love  bases  down 

167 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

upon  moral  obligations.  God  has  with  love 
and  with  passionate  enthusiasm  come  as 
deeply  into  men's  lives  as  it  is  possible  for  him 
to  come.  He  has  discharged  and  does  dis- 
charge with  solemn  joy  the  moral  obligations 
of  creatorship  and  fatherhood.  He  is  the 
leader  of  all  in  self-sacrifice;  this  is  the  glory 
of  the  cross.  We  can  easily  lose  ourselves  in 
theological  intricacies  when  we  attempt  the- 
ories of  Christology  and  atonement,  but  we 
must  not  lose  sight  of  the  clear  moral  aim 
which  the  framers  of  the  theories — in  so  far 
as  they  have  met  any  widespread  demand  at 
all — have  had  at  heart.  They  have  been  anx- 
ious to  show  that  God  is  moral  above  all 
others,  that,  having  placed  heavy  responsibili- 
ties upon  men,  he  takes  the  heaviest  responsi- 
bilities upon  himself,  that  in  Christ  and  the 
cross  he  has  laid  bare  his  inner  thought  to 
show  men  that  in  the  realest  and  profoundest 
sense  he  is  with  men. 


168 


V 

THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTEINE 

IN  the  old  days  a  wise  Christian  leader 
counseled  his  followers  to  adorn  the  doctrine 
of  the  Lord  Jesus.  Throughout  the  centuries 
there  has  been  a  real,  though  for  the  most  part 
half-conscious,  tendency  to  act  out  the  impulse 
back  of  the  apostle's  advice.  The  aesthetic  or 
artistic  impulse  has  led  to  most  notable  crea- 
tions in  the  manifestation  of  religious  spirit. 
We  have  only  to  instance  the  subjects  of  many 
of  the  world's  greatest  paintings  and  orations 
to  prove  this  statement,  and  both  church 
architecture  and  church  ritual  bear  witness 
to  the  force  of  the  same  impulse. 

We  are  liable  to  grave  misunderstanding 
when  we  speak  of  the  significance  of  an  in- 
crease of  a  discernment  of  right  form  or  of  a 
sense  of  beauty  for  religious  insights.  .  Still, 
the  growth  and  improvement  of  what  might  be 
called  the  artistic  impulse  really  make  for 
the  betterment  of  theological  statement.  Ta 
begin  with  a  consideration  which  is.  _  not 

169 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

directly  artistic,  the  progress  of  mechanical 
invention  helps  us  to  see  the  need  of  right 
form,  not,  indeed,  for  purposes  of  aesthetic 
gratification  merely,  but  for  the  sake  of  in- 
creasing effectiveness.  Quite  often  the  curve 
of  greatest  beauty  proves  to  be  the  curve  of 
greatest  strength.  But  even  from  the  stand- 
point of  effectiveness  alone  it  is  essential  that 
an  inventor  work  toward  an  effective  form. 
The  inventor  may  have  before  him  two  pieces 
of  glass  of  precisely  the  same  quality.  One  is 
plain  glass  and  the  other  is  the  lens  of  a  tele- 
scope. The  lens  is  a  lens  simply  because  it  has 
been  given  a  certain  form.  Its  curve  has  been 
fashioned  with  mathematical  exactness.  Prop- 
erly mounted  and  turned  toward  the  sky,  it 
will  reveal  to  the  observer  something  worth 
seeing.  A  recent  book  of  three  hundred  pages 
describing  inventors  at  work  gives  over  half 
its  space  simply  to  this  consideration — that 
the  process  of  invention  has  to  do  not  so  much 
with  an  attempt  at  creating  new  materials,  or 
even  new  combinations  of  materials,  as  with 
the  change  in  the  form  of  old  and  familiar  ma- 
terials. 

As  it  is  in  the  realm  of  material  invention 
so  is  it  also  in  the  realm  of  literary  invention. 
In  fact,  a  production  can  hardly  be  called 

170 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

literary  until  the  material  has  been  thrown 
into  the  right  form.  A  scientist  may  make  a 
great  and  far-reaching  discovery,  but  his  dis- 
covery does  not  become  effective  in  shaping 
the  thinking  of  the  people  until,  as  in  the  case 
of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  for  example,  it 
is  stated  with  some  degree  of  literary  skill.  In 
the  realm  of  social  investigation  we  have  at 
our  hand  to-day  masses  of  facts  terrifically 
dynamic  in  their  possible  power  to  arouse 
public  attention,  or  even  to  start  revolution. 
But  these  facts  lie  in  unshaped  masses  in  gov- 
ernment reports,  in  papers  read  before  learned 
societies,  in  articles  published  in  technical 
journals.  What  is  needed  is  the  appearance  of 
some  artist  who  can  shape  the  material  into 
effective  form.  Now,  the  progress  of  theolog- 
ical thinking  in  our  time  is  somewhat  a 
progress  in  the  shaping  of  material.  We  have 
not  discovered  much  that  is  altogether  new. 
We  have,  however,  learned  how  to  change  em- 
phasis and  how  to  omit  altogether,  and  how  to 
cast  aside  the  nonessentials,  and  how  to  fash- 
ion the  essentials  toward  a  statement  with  a 
cutting  edge.  The  call  of  the  preacher  espe- 
cially is  not  so  much  to  be  an  original  au- 
thority in  scientific,  or  philosophic,  or  social, 
or  even  theological  investigation.  The  au- 

171 


THE    INCREASE    OF   FAITH 

thorities  in  these  various  spheres  are  more  apt 
to  be  the  men  of  the  schools;  but  the  men  of 
the  schools  are  not  apt  to  be  conspicuously  suc- 
cessful as  masters  of  effective  popular  state- 
ment. It  remains  for  the  preacher  to  take  the 
masses  of  fresh  material  which  are  delivered 
to  him  almost  daily  and  to  shape  these  into 
effectiveness.  To  do  this  work  as  it  ought  to 
be  done  will  quite  likely  be  enough  of  a  task 
for  any  man  called  to  the  pulpit.  Intellectual 
ability  shows  itself  not  more  in  the  discovery 
of  truth  than  in  the  cogent  and  well-balanced 
statement  of  the  truth. 

Lest  we  appear  to  lay  too  much  stress  on  a 
phase  of  religious  effort  which  may  seem  to 
have  to  do  merely  with  the  technic  of  the 
preacher's  work,  we  hasten  to  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  obligation  here  is  not  merelj 
professional  and  artistic  but  moral  as  well. 
We  hear  a  vast  deal  to-day  about  the  honesty 
of  religious  teachers.  We  are  told  of  the  obli- 
gation upon  the  religious  teacher  to  be  honest 
with  himself.  We  urge  again  what  we  have 
said  in  a  previous  lecture  about  the  need  of  the 
leader's  being  honest  to  his  followers.  To  be 
honest  to  the  follower  implies  a  willingness  to 
fashion  and  refashion  a  statement  of  truth  till 
it  cannot  fail  of  a  true  effect.  The  material  in 

172 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

the  statement  may  be  true:  the  form  of  the 
statement  may  be  such  as  to  produce  only 
falsity  in  the  impression.  From  this  point  of 
view  it  might  fairly  be  said  that  some  men 
whose  utterances  are  always  true  in  their 
matter  are  always  untrue  in  their  form.  The 
insignificant  truth  is  made  untrue  when  it  is 
treated  with  as  much  emphasis  as  the  im- 
portant truth.  Putting  truths  all  on  the  same 
plane  comes  in  the  end  to  positive  distortion. 
Yet  the  distortion  may  come  not  from  pur- 
posive desire  but  from  indifference  to  perspec- 
tive and  proportion.  Among  the  religious 
thinkers  of  an  earlier  generation  there  used 
to  be  considerable  debate  as  to  the  conditions 
of  salvation.  There  was  much  support  of  the 
doctrine  that  no  man  could  be  summarily  cast 
out  of  the  kingdom  who  had  never  heard  Christ 
preached.  This  was  obviously  a  provision  in 
behalf  of  the  heathen.  As  soon,  however,  as 
an  expedient  of  this  sort  was  resorted  to  in 
behalf  of  the  heathen  the  question  arose  as  to 
what  others  had  not  heard  Christ  preached. 
Some  took  the  ground  that  even  faithful  at- 
tendants at  churches  had  not  heard  Christ 
preached.  We  need  not  revive  this  ancient 
debate  to  see  the  force  of  such  a  contention. 
A  religious  teacher  might  draw  a  portrait  of 

173 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

Christ  in  lines  every  one  of  which  might  be 
true.  Yet  the  lines  might  be  so  put  together 
— or  so  not  put  together — as  to  result  in 
caricature  rather  than  in  portraiture. 

All  this,  however,  may  make  theological 
statement  seem  more  of  an  artificial  creation 
than  true  statements  are.  Keal  revelations 
grow  after  the  manner  of  organisms.  The 
supreme  beauty  in  this  world  is  the  beauty  of 
a  growing  life.  If  the  life  within  be  full  and 
free,  the  outward  expression  is  apt  to  take  on 
beauty  of  form  to  correspond.  If  the  inner 
life  is  cramped  or  scantily  nourished,  the  out- 
ward expression  is  distorted  or  deformed. 
The  organs  of  a  growing  life  make  a  twofold 
appeal  to  us — an  appeal  because  of  their  effec- 
tiveness and  an  appeal  because  of  their  own 
inherent  beauty.  The  erect  body,  for  example, 
is  stronger  than  the  bent  body.  There  is  more 
chance  to  breathe,  better  distribution  of  the 
weight  to  be  carried,  an  opportunity  for  the 
sight  to  range  ahead  and  on  both  sides.  The 
impoverished  organism,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  not  strength  enough  to  hold  itself  erect, 
and  through  this  lack  of  strength  it  loses  the 
chance  to  gain  more  strength.  In  a  sense 
beauty  may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  very  life 
of  a  growing  religious  organism.  Beauty  of 

174 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

form  is  the  natural  expression  of  a  living  re- 
ligious insight. 

In  the  second  place,  the  beauty  of  a  state- 
ment— its  correctness  of  form  and  its  exact- 
ness of  symmetry — makes  an  effective  appeal 
on  its  own  account.  Quite  apart  from  the  fact 
that  statements  of  truth  can  be  put  in  effective 
form  simply  for  the  sake  of  effectiveness  as 
statements,  they  should  be  given  correct  form 
for  the  sake  of  the  appeal  which  the  beauty 
itself  makes.  The  masters  of  theological  state- 
ment have  always  known  how  to  put  this 
impress  of  beauty  upon  their  work.  We  some- 
times wonder  how  it  has  come  about  that  sys- 
tems of  philosophy  have  lasted  beyond  their 
day  into  times  in  which  they  are  not  altogether 
useful.  We  sometimes  speak  of  succeeding 
generations  as  under  the  spell  of  systems  of  an 
earlier  day.  We  speak  more  wisely  than  we 
realize.  The  spell  is  the  spell  cast  by  a  genius 
for  construction.  The  thinker  has  thrown  his 
thought  into  form  that  makes  it  unescapably 
imposing.  There  is  a  unity  about  the  system 
and  a  symmetry  in  its  development  which 
make  men  turn  back  to  gaze.  We  can  no  more 
escape  the  charm  of  some  of  these  systems 
than  we  can  escape  the  charm  of  the  Pyramids 
or  the  Parthenon. 

175 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

The  recognition  of  this  truth  is  ever  before 
the  higher  order  of  religious  prophet.  He 
strives  to  adorn  his  doctrine.  He  knows,  of 
course,  that  adornment  is  not  something  put 
on  from  without;  it  is  the  movement  from 
within  of  a  living  principle.  The  prophet 
knows  that  when  the  principle  comes  to  high- 
est expression  it  will  minister  to  the  highest 
in  men.  We  have  said  that  present-day  philos- 
ophy seems  to  be  moving  on  the  sound  prin- 
ciple that  in  our  quest  for  truth  we  are  to 
follow  the  lead  of  the  highest  and  best  in  our- 
selves. We  may  justly  feel  that  the  craving 
for  the  highest  and  best  will  not  be  satisfied 
until  the  truth  which  in  itself  seems  highest 
and  best  has  been  joined  to  highest  and  best 
statement. 

Prominent  among  the  factors  which  to-day 
are  making  for  the  adornment  of  doctrine  is 
the  growth  of  a  sense  of  restraint.  We  share 
with  others  the  alarm  at  the  falling  off  in  re- 
ligious activities.  We  do  not  feel  alarm,  how- 
ever, at  the  falling  off  of  some  forms  of  re- 
ligious expression.  It  is  sometimes  claimed 
that  the  religious  spirit  shows  itself  in  an 
utter  abandonment  of  the  life  of  the  believer 
to  complete  expression.  This  is  true  if  by  ex- 
pression we  are  thinking  of  deeds  of  self- 

176 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

sacrifice.  Yet  even  here  there  are  limitations 
imposed  by  the  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things. 
When  we  are  thinking  of  religious  expression 
as  taking  the  form  of  literary  statement  we 
must  give  large  part  to  the  limitations  im- 
posed by  the  fitness  of  things. 

There  is  to-day  a  growing  sense  of  restraint 
which  tends  to  magnify  the  importance  of  the 
normal  and  healthy  in  religious  expression  and 
to  prevent  overemphasis  on  the  morbid  and 
unhealthy.  While  there  is  truth  in  the  claim 
that  art  should  be  followed  for  art's  own  sake, 
there  is  even  deeper  truth  in  the  further  claim 
that  nothing  can  be  truly  artistic  which  does 
not  have  back  of  it  a  normal  and  healthy  pur- 
pose. It  would  be  very  hard  for  even  a  gifted 
artist  to  make  much  of  a  subject  which  all  the 
world  knew  to  be  sickly  or  diseased.  Certain 
processes  in  nature  are  called  morbid  when 
considered  in  relation  to  their  bearing  on  hu- 
man welfare.  Certain  dangerous  growths,  for 
example,  take  place  in  the  human  organism 
and  in  the  end  bring  the  organism  to  death. 
The  actual  processes  of  these  growths,  when 
viewed  by  the  scientist,  may  move  according 
to  the  same  bacteriological  or  physiological 
laws  as  do  the  healthy  processes.  The  micro- 
scopic forms  produced  may  be  just  as  beau- 

177 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

tiful  in  their  tiny  lines  and  as  symmetrical 
in  their  proportions  as  the  forms  which  make 
for  health.  If,  however,  an  artist  should  try 
to  give  expression  to  what  he  might  call  the 
inherent  beauty  of  a  morbid  growth,  he  would 
find  himself  in  difficulty  the  moment  he  tried 
to  secure  an  audience.  Of  course  it  may  seem 
that  judging  the  aesthetic  quality  of  a  fact  in 
nature  by  its  relation  to  human  needs  is  arrant 
egotism,  but  the  world  thus  judges,  neverthe- 
less. If  our  contention  be  just  in  this  illus- 
tration, much  more  must  it  be  just  in  the  realm 
of  religious  expression.  The  world  will  not 
finally  tolerate  emphasis  upon  the  unnatural 
or  the  unhealthy  in  religious  utterance. 

Discerning  critics  have  more  than  once 
called  attention  to  the  element  of  restraint  in 
the  gospel  narratives.  Think  for  a  moment  of 
the  story  of  the  crucifixion  as  told  by  the  evan- 
gelists. Here  was  every  opportunity  for  mor- 
bid and  harrowing  treatment  of  ghastly  de- 
tails, an  opportunity  which  later  ages  did  not 
fail  to  improve.  In  the  gospel  narratives  the 
dreadful  event  is  passed  over  as  quickly  as 
possible.  Moreover,  the  few  touches,  swift  as 
they  are,  set  before  us  not  the  horrible  aspects 
of  the  story  but  the  spiritual  significance. 
This  part  of  the  gospels,  by  the  way,  is  but 

178 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

little  short  of  a  literary  miracle.  The  writers 
very  likely  knew  nothing  about  Greek  re- 
straint, but  they  had  the  spirit  of  restraint, 
nevertheless.  The  glory  about  the  cross  of 
Christ  is  a  normal  and  healthy  glory,  the  reve- 
lation of  that  spirit  of  love  which  is  forever  at 
the  heart  of  things.  The  writers  so  brush 
away  the  dreadful  as  to  leave  the  love  of  Christ 
streaming  forth  unmistakably. 

The  movement  away  from  the  unhealthy 
must  bring  about  better  spiritual  conditions 
both  for  society  and  for  the  individual.  It  is 
to  these  back-lying  conditions  that  we  must 
look  as  we  think  of  the  religious  expression  of 
a  particular  time.  We  can  best  see  this  im- 
provement by  contrasting  our  own  century 
with  some  earlier  centuries.  How  much 
chance  would  monasticism,  for  example,  have 
of  taking  root  in  our  time?  We  would  not 
disparage  the  good  of  monasticism.  Many 
benefits  came  forth  from  the  system  which 
have  been  of  lasting  good  to  humanity.  Quite 
likely  we  could  date  many  productive  prin- 
ciples of  modern  agriculturalism  back  to  the 
gardens  of  the  monks.  It  was — though  of 
course  in  much  later  times — to  Mendel  the 
monk  that  the  world  owed  the  long  series  of 
experiments  which  resulted  in  the  scientific 

179 


THE    INCBEASE    OF    FAITH 

formulation  of  the  biological  law  of  heredity. 
But  advantages  like  this  are  largely  incidental. 
We  may  at  least  say  that  in  our  day  monasti- 
cism  on  a  large  scale  would  be  looked  upon  as 
aberrant  and  unnatural.  Here  and  there  an 
individual  who  has  taken  the  vows  of  celibacy, 
or  who  has  even  consecrated  himself  to  the 
life  of  a  hermit,  may  give  utterance  to  loftiest 
religious  expression;  but,  on  the  whole,  cir- 
cumstances which  lie  apart  from  the  main 
current  of  normal  human  life  cannot  be  pro- 
ductive of  best  religious  statement. 

As  it  is  in  the  lives  of  communities  so  also  is 
it  in  the  life  of  the  individual.  It  may  cause 
almost  a  smile  to  say  that  our  age  has  turned 
away  from  habits  of  spiritual  introspection. 
This  would  seem  to  put  the  present-day  con- 
dition very  mildly.  It  may  cause  astonish- 
ment when  a  professedly  religious  teacher 
declares  that  there  is  danger  in  religious  intro- 
spection. The  danger  does  not  seem  to  be 
especially  imminent  in  our  time.  But  while 
the  movement  away  from  introspection  to-day 
may  be  just  an  expression  of  indifference, 
such  a  movement  may  rise  from  true  religious 
instinct.  The  needs  of  the  individual  soul 
must  certainly  not  be  neglected.  It  is  very 
easy,  however,  for  the  devout  believer  to  carry 

180 


THE  ADORNMENT  OP  DOCTRINE 

introspection  to  an  unhealthy  excess.  The 
more  devout  the  believer  the  greater  the 
danger.  Suppose  a  man  should  ask  himself 
at  the  close  of  each  day's  religious  effort 
whether  during  that  day  he  had  done  all  he 
could  for  the  advance  of  the  kingdom.  Ordi- 
narily, this  question  is  wholesome.  It  is  very 
easy  to  see,  however,  that  the  question  might 
be  too  frequently  repeated.  And  too  fre- 
quently repeated,  the  question  might  easily 
lead  to  morbidness.  This  danger  is  especially 
imminent  when  the  mind  is  given  to  self- 
scrutiny  as  to  its  own  sincerity,  or  as  to  the 
signs  of  the  presence  of  the  divine  within  it- 
self. Utterances  born  out  of  an  unhealthy 
mental  state  violate  that  sense  of  fitness  which 
should  mark  religious  utterance.  If  we  do 
not  directly  discourage  the  habit  of  overmuch 
religious  introspection  to-day,  we  at  least  favor 
reticence  in  speech  about  such  introspection. 

The  adornment  of  doctrine  implies  likewise 
a  restraint  from  any  degree  of  exaggeration. 
In  a  previous  lecture  we  spoke  of  the  increas- 
ing emphasis  upon  simplicity  of  statement. 
There  we  were  emphasizing  the  need  of  sim- 
plicity in  statements  addressed  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  vast  masses  of  the  people.  It 
is  in  order  in  the  present  connection  to  insist 

181 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

that  simplicity  of  statement  must  characterize 
religious  utterance  if  that  utterance  is  to  min- 
ister to  the  finest  feelings  of  men.  In  the  su- 
preme crises  of  experience  the  great  minds 
seem  by  a  certain  innate  perception  to  move 
toward  simplicity  of  expression.  There  is  no 
room  in  such  minds  at  such  times  for  anything 
exaggerated  or  gaudy  or  spectacular.  Mr. 
Charles  Francis  Adams  has  a  fine  passage 
concerning  the  bearing  of  Grant  and  Lee  at 
Appomattox.  Mr.  Adams  points  out  that  not 
a  single  word  was  spoken  by  either  actor  in 
the  scene  to  detract  from  a  quiet  simplicity 
which  marked  all  the  details  of  the  momentous 
transaction.  When  we  think  of  the  vast  mean- 
ing of  the  event  we  might  at  first  glance  feel 
something  of  a  craving  for  at  least  a  touch  of 
the  dramatic  in  the  final  scene.  An  immense 
war  had  been  fought  through  to  an  immense 
victory  on  the  one  side  and  an  immense  defeat 
on  the  other.  The  people  of  the  North  had 
fought  with  the  conviction  that  the  destinies 
of  democracy  were  involved  in  the  right  issues 
of  the  campaign.  The  people  of  the  South  had 
sustained  themselves  through  unparalleled 
privations  with  the  belief  that  they  were  fight- 
ing for  the  sacred  cause  of  liberty.  The  meet- 
ing between  the  chief  actors  might  well  have 

182 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

been  regarded  as  one  upon  which  the  after  ages 
would  delight  to  look.  Considerations  like 
these  might  have  prompted  the  ordinary  leader 
to  a  little  self-conscious  posing.  But  there  was 
no  posing.  The  reason  was  that  the  actual 
leaders  were  far  from  ordinary.  Without 
purposely  doing  so  they  instinctively  did  what 
the  real  fitness  of  things  called  for. 

A  passage  in  the  Old  Testament  instructs 
us  that  on  the  day  of  atonement  the  priests 
laid  aside  their  lavishly  embroidered  robes 
and  clad  themselves  in  simple  white.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  restraint  is  becoming  in  ex- 
pression which  aims  to  deal  with  the  highest 
religious  ideas.  There  are,  indeed,  splendid 
flights  of  oratory  and  magnificent  poems  in 
the  Scriptures.  But  even  in  these  the  quality 
of  restraint  is  marked.  If  we  were  searching 
for  indications  of  inspiration  in  the  Scrip- 
tures, we  might  find  that  inspiration  revealing 
itself  in  a  contrast  between  our  Scriptures  and 
other  scriptures  written  at  substantially  the 
same  times.  Not  only  are  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures healthier  in  moral  tone  than  the  others, 
but  there  is  a  dignified  restraint  about  the 
former  in  contrast  with  the  abandonment  of 
at  least  parts  of  the  other.  Abandonment  has 
its  place  in  a  Christian  system,  but  the  aban- 

183 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

donment  is  never  that  of  wantonness  or  reck- 
lessness. 

Insight  into  the  true  demands  of  the  re- 
ligious spirit  also  has  a  tendency  to  keep  us 
from  the  curious  and  artificial.  Religion  is 
in  a  sense  profoundly  natural.  It  is  the  out- 
come of  really  primal  feelings.  Like  every- 
thing else,  it  has  its  merely  curious  phases, 
and,  like  everything  else  also,  it  lends  itself 
to  artificiality.  But  religion  in  its  highest 
reaches  has  very  little  place  either  for  the 
curious  or  the  artificial.  It  may  be  that 
a  half-conscious  perception  of  this  truth 
underlies  present-day  impatience  with  fine- 
spun theological  theories.  In  looking  back 
to  the  period  of  scholasticism,  for  example, 
we  are  sorely  tried  at  the  over-systematiza- 
tion  of  doctrinal  statements.  The  teachers  of 
that  day  dwelt  much  on  essences  and  sub- 
stances and  processions  in  dealing  with  the 
divine  nature.  Each  of  these  terms  has  very 
likely  something  of  vital  meaning  even  for 
present-day  theology.  But  in  medieval  days 
the  terms  were  handled  with  an  overelab- 
oration  which  practically  put  them  out  of 
touch  with  anything  real  in  heaven  or  on  earth, 
though  perhaps  we  would  better  say  that  such 
expressions  would  suggest  nothing  real  to  us 

184 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

to-day.  Scholasticism  did  great  work  in  show- 
ing the  futility  of  overcarefulness  and  punctil- 
iousness in  doctrinal  exposition.  The  student 
of  philosophy  will  give  all  credit  to  the  scho- 
lastics for  working  out  a  terminology  some  of 
which  is  lasting  in  value,  and  for  fashioning 
some  philosophic  tools  whose  usefulness  we 
have  not  yet  outgrown ;  but  the  curse  of  scho- 
lasticism was  and  is  its  artificiality. 

Many  theological  dogmas  fall  into  disfavor 
through  being  too  complete.  The  very  fact  of 
their  completeness  suggests  the  artificial.  We 
have  no  doubt  that  the  so-called  evangelical 
churches  would  insist  quite  as  strongly  in 
1912  as  ever  upon  the  religious  truth  which 
must  lie  at  the  heart  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity.  There  is  in  this  doctrine  a  suggestion 
of  fullness  of  moral  life  in  the  Divine  which 
the  churches  would  not  give  up  without  a 
struggle,  or  even  after  a  struggle.  But  in 
every  church  there  is  increasing  unwillingness 
to  hear  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  which  are 
overelaborate.  We  will  not  listen  as  com- 
placently as  did  our  fathers  to  discussions  as 
to  just  what  the  word  "Person"  means  when 
applied  to  the  Persons  of  the  Holy  Trinity. 
We  Avould  protest,  on  the  one  hand,  against 
any  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  which  would 

185 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

empty  it  of  vital  significance;  on  the  other 
hand,  we  would  turn  away  from  a  too  com- 
plete discussion,  for  example,  of  what  the 
different  functions  of  the  Persons  of  the 
Trinity  may  be.  No  doubt  very  many  logical 
arguments  may  be  adduced  in  discussions  of 
this  kind.  But  the  more  logical  the  arguments 
the  more  restless  the  listeners.  To  be  over- 
complete  in  such  a  field  of  theological  discus- 
sion jars  upon  our  sense  of  what  is  really  be- 
coming and  fitting.  The  celebrated  divine 
who  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago  in  discussing 
the  divinity  of  Christ  established  three  main 
propositions,  namely,  pleromatic  divinity, 
pleromatic  humanity,  and  hypostatic  union, 
might  be  just  as  cogent  in  his  logic  now  as 
then,  but  he  would  hardly  get  much  of  a  hear- 
ing to-day.  Thinkers  of  his  kind  might  pro- 
claim that  this  is  because  of  the  increasing  in- 
difference of  our  day  to  theological  discussion. 
But  the  objection  to  this  sort  of  discussion 
does  not  come  from  the  indifferent.  The  in- 
different are  too  indifferent  even  to  object. 
The  protest  comes  from  those  who  are  really 
interested  in  the  statement  of  the  religious 
truth,  but  who  instinctively  shrink  from  a  too 
clearly  artificial  exposition  of  what  at  least 
ought  to  be  profoundly  natural. 

186 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

The  sense  of  restraint  also  is  keeping  us 
back  from  some  of  the  rougher  and  cruder  ut- 
terances of  early  days.  We  do  not  speak  thus 
with  any  desire  to  belittle  the  religious  phrase- 
ology of  our  fathers.  We  would  give  much  if 
we  could  put  into  some  of  our  more  refined  ex- 
pressions the  mighty  energy  that  rushed  forth 
from  the  speech  of  our  fathers.  So  far  as  our 
Methodist  branch  of  the  Church  is  concerned, 
the  fathers  had  little  time  for  the  refinements. 
Methodism  was  born  at  a  time  when  only  the 
most  vigorous  shaking  could  arouse  the  Eng- 
lish nation  from  its  lethargy.  The  sins  of  the 
nation  were  drunkenness  and  licentiousness 
and  theft  and  murder;  these  were  the  evils 
against  which  Methodism  launched  itself.  In 
assault  on  such  sins  there  was  scant  room  for 
the  niceties  of  religious  speech.  When  Meth- 
odism was  transported  to  our  country  it  made 
its  chief  conquest  in  pioneer  conditions.  The 
pioneer  life  is  not  a  parlor  life.  Out  of  the 
roughness  of  pioneer  conditions  came  a  rough- 
ness of  speech  that  was  exactly  fitted  to  the 
time  and  place  it  was  intended  to  serve.  The 
pioneer  sins  were  apt  to  be  rough  sins,  like 
brawling  and  fist-fighting.  The  success  of 
men  like  Peter  Cartwright  lay  in  the  fact  that 
they  could  attack  pioneer  conditions  with  in- 

187 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

struments  which  reached  and  transformed  the 
pioneer.  In  the  journal  of  Francis  Asbury 
are  repeated  references  to  his  conviction  that 
he  must  be  "dreadfully  loud  and  alarming." 
Quite  likely  he  succeeded  in  being  both.  And 
very  surely  the  preaching  that  lacked  the  loud 
and  alarming  quality  would  have  been  futile. 
We  must  not  forget  that  preaching  is,  after  all, 
an  instrumental  statement  of  the  truth.  In 
estimating  its  success  we  must  judge  it  by  the 
effect  it  produces.  The  glory  of  Methodism 
has  been  the  energy  with  which  it  pushed  its 
conquests  on  the  frontiers.  The  leader  in 
these  conquests  was  the  pioneer  preacher. 
For  him  plainness  of  speech  amounting  to 
roughness  was  an  absolute  necessity.  The 
roughness  was  not  assumed.  It  was  sincere, 
coming  out  of  a  toughness  of  fiber  begotten  in 
him  by  the  conditions  of  which  he  was  a  part. 

In  what  we  say  about  this  rough  vigor  we 
do  not  mean  to  imply  that  there  is  not  room 
in  modern  preaching  for  such  plainness  of 
speech.  Thousands  upon  thousands  of  men 
cannot  understand  anything  else.  Thousands 
of  men  to-day  are  in  sins  as  gross  as  any  which 
John  Wesley  saw.  We  are  not  to  be  classed 
among  those  sensitive  souls  who  shrink  back 
in  horror  when  a  preacher  uses  language  which 

188 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

may  seem  to  the  conventional  to  be  very  sensa- 
tional. The  success  of  some  sensational 
preachers  arises  out  of  the  fact  that  what  to 
some  persons  seems  sensationalism  may  meet 
a  real  need.  There  are  men  in  all  ranks  of 
society  whose  real  thinking  is  in  essentially 
coarse  terms.  The  question  which  the  evan- 
gelistic preacher  has  to  consider  in  presenting 
the  gospel  to  such  minds  is  how  to  speak  a 
language  which  such  men  will  understand. 
The  alternative  is  to  throw  out  this  rough 
hempen  rope  or  to  let  the  men  go  down.  In 
the  presence  of  such  an  alternative  we  can 
even  bring  ourselves  to  endure  a  crudeness  and 
slanginess  of  speech,  if  this  is  the  only  speech 
that  the  men  to  whom  it  is  addressed  can 
understand.  But  there  are  limits  here  which 
regard  for  the  fitness  of  things  and  some  meas- 
ure of  good  sense  ought  to  impose. 

In  Zion's  Songster,  a  Collection  of  Hymns 
and  Spiritual  Songs  Usually  Sung  at  Camp 
Meetings  and  Also  in  Revivals  of  Religion, 
published  by  J.  and  J.  Harper  in  New  York 
in  1831,  is  the  following  hymn : 

When  the  fierce  north  wind,  with  his  airy  forces, 
Rears  up  the  Baltic  to  a  roaring  fury, 
And  the  red  lightning  with  a  storm  of  hail  comes 
Rushing  amain  down; 
189 


THE    INCREASE    OF   FAITH 

Now  the  poor  sailors  stand  amazed  and  tremble, 
While  the  hoarse  thunder  like  a  bloody  trumpet, 
Roars  a  loud  onset  to  the  gaping  waters, 
Quick  to  devour  them. 

Such  shall  the  noise  be,  and  the  wild  disorder, 
If  things  eternal  may  be  like  these  earthly; 
Such  the  dire  terror  when  the  great  archangel 
Shakes  the  creation; 

Tears  the  strong  pillars  of  the  vault  of  heaven. 
Breaks  up  old  marble,  the  repose  of  princes: 
See  the  graves  open  and  the  bones  arising! 
Flames  all  around  them! 

Hark!  the  shrill  outcries  of  the  guilty  wretches; 
Lively  bright  horror  and  amazing  anguish 
Stare  through  their  eyeballs,  while  the  living  worm  lies 
Gnawing  within  them. 

Thoughts  like  old  vultures  prey  upon  their  heartstrings, 
And  the  smart  twinges,  when  the  eye  beholds  the 
Lofty  Judge  frowning,  and  a  flood  of  vengeance 
Rolling  before  him. 

Hopeless  immortals,  how  they  scream  and  shiver! 
While  devils  push  them  to  the  pit  wide-yawning, 
Hideous  and  gloomy,  to  receive  them  headlong 
Down  to  the  center. 

Stop  here,  my  fancy  (all  away,  ye  horrid, 
Doleful  ideas!),  come,  arise  to  Jesus: 
How  he  sits  Godlike,  and  the  saints  around  him 
Throned,  yet  adoring! 

Oh,  may  I  sit  there,  when  he  comes  triumphant, 
Dooming  the  nations!  then  ascend  to  glory, 
While  our  hosannas  all  along  the  passage 
Shout  the  Redeemer. 
190 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

We  do  not  know  how  large  use  was  made 
of  this  particular  hymn;  and  it  is  fair  to  say 
that  this  is  not  a  sample  of  the  phraseology  or 
imagery  of  the  entire  collection.  Many  of  the 
hymns  in  the  book  are  the  great  hymns,  which 
will  probably  be  used  through  the  centuries. 
Moreover,  we  recognize  a  rugged  force  in  this 
hymn,  and  we  can  feel  something  of  the  power 
that  it  must  have  had  with  a  congregation 
eighty  years  ago.  We  recognize  also  the  eter- 
nal truth  which  is  embodied  in  the  hymn. 
Apart,  however,  from  the  presence  or  absence 
of  poetic  quality  we  could  hardly  think  of  this 
hymn  as  likely  to  endure  through  any  but  a 
special  period  of  the  Church's  life.  No  matter 
what  the  effectiveness  of  the  stanzas  may  have 
been  in  other  days,  we  should  hardly  expect 
much  effectiveness  from  such  style  of  compo- 
sition to-day.  In  spite  of  all  the  extravagance 
and  exaggeration  and  crudeness  of  utterance 
in  the  time  in  which  we  live,  the  most  effec- 
tive statement  is  apt  to  be  restrained.  Merely 
for  rhetorical  purposes  understatement  is  apt 
to  be  quite  as  powerful  as  overstatement.  The 
passage  which  suggests  by  a  touch  here  and 
there  is  quite  as  productive  of  the  right  im- 
pression as  the  passage  which  comes  forth  in 
attempt  at  complete  expression.  When  such 

191 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

completeness  is  aimed  at  the  impression  finally 
left  is  one  of  crudeness. 

And  all  this  leads  up  to  the  unwillingness 
of  some  very  worthy  religious  thinkers  to  at- 
tempt to  put  some  insights  into  speech  at  all. 
Some  truths  are  better  suggested  than  defi- 
nitely declared.  We  ask  indulgence  for  re- 
peated harking  back  to  the  principle  of  effec- 
tiveness in  a  discussion  which  professedly  aims 
at  emphasis  on  the  fitness  of  things  in  itself, 
but  the  fit  expression  is,  after  all,  the  effective 
expression.  Some  truths  or  facts  are  too  great 
to  be  described.  We  lack  as  yet  the  speech 
instruments  for  their  description.  The  best 
we  can  do  is  to  point  a  learner  toward  the 
mood  in  which  the  significance  of  the  truth  can 
be  sensed  rather  than  declared.  One  of  the 
sublimest  passages  in  Victor  Hugo  is  his  de- 
scription of  the  battle  of  Waterloo  in  Les 
Miserables.  The  description  is  an  attempt  at 
definite  and  measurably  complete  setting 
forth  of  the  battle.  Upon  one  type  of  reader 
the  effect  is  no  doubt  overwhelming.  But  an- 
other reader  feels,  after  all,  the  incompleteness 
of  the  labored  attempt  at  completeness.  A 
student  of  Thackeray  has  somewhere  remarked 
that  perhaps  quite  as  effective  an  impression 
of  the  greatness  of  Napoleon  is  to  be  obtained 

192 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

from  the  few  references  to  Napoleon  on  the 
pages  of  Vanity  Fair  as  from  any  direct  de- 
scription by  other  writers  of  the  battles  of  Na- 
poleon. The  significance  of  Waterloo  is  al- 
most as  clearly  seen  by  Thackeray's  story  of 
what  was  passing  in  Brussels  on  the  day  of  the 
battle  as  by  the  direct  statement  of  the  prog- 
ress of  the  battle  itself.  Yet  Thackeray's 
chapter  has  its  force  merely  in  suggestion. 
From  some  incidents  of  confusion  on  the 
streets  of  Brussels — incidents  that  could  be 
fully  described — we  can  imagine  that  tumult 
and  shouting  of  the  captains  at  the  front  which 
could  never  be  described. 

Likewise  in  the  realm  of  religious  life  there 
are  some  experiences  which  are  beyond  de- 
scription. There  are  some  truths  which  can- 
not be  compassed  in  theoretical  statement. 
Take,  for  example,  that  final  setting  forth  of 
the  love  of  God  which  we  have  in  the  cross  of 
Christ.  Why  is  it  that  we  feel  so  uncertain 
about  theories  of  atonement?  Is  it  because  we 
are  indifferent  to  the  love  of  God  obviously 
set  on  high  in  the  cross  of  Christ?  Very  likely 
the  cross  means  more  to-day  to  devout  believ- 
ers than  it  has  ever  meant.  Just  because  it 
means  more  there  is  distrust  of  theory.  No 
one  theory  is  adequate,  and  after  all  the  the- 

193 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

ories  have  been  added  together  and  the  good 
of  each  accepted  at  its  highest  value  we  still 
feel  that  the  formulations  are  inadequate.  We 
look  upon  each  theory  as  the  attempt  of  a  par- 
ticular age  to  phrase  that  age's  best  thought 
of  God  in  the  highest  and  best  utterance.  But 
the  voice  of  no  one  age  is  complete,  and  the 
voices  of  all  the  Christian  centuries  are  not 
complete.  And  beyond  all  this  anything  which 
is  a  theory  of  the  cross  cannot  in  the  nature 
of  things  be  complete,  for  the  cross  is  more 
than  theory.  Anything  which  has  to  do  with 
divine  moral  passion  is  more  than  theory.  So 
while  we  frame  for  ourselves  attempts  at  scien- 
tific formulation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  cross, 
we  do  so  with  the  inner  reservation  that  these 
formulations  must  be  taken  as  mere  sugges- 
tions or  adumbrations  of  a  truth  which  we 
cannot  express.  The  greater  part  is  the  unex- 
pressed part.  The  sense  of  fitness  prevents  us 
from  trying  to  express  the  truth  too  com- 
pletely. There  is  a  vast  realm  here  which  is 
to  be  explored  by  reverent  and  reticent  senti- 
ment rather  than  by  scientific  and  logical  ex- 
pertness.  In  this  realm  there  is  something 
almost  irreverent,  something  almost  imperti- 
nent about  too  definite  a  statement.  Henri 
Bergson  in  his  Creative  Evolution  makes  the 

194 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

point  that  as  soon  as  we  harden  a  living  ex- 
perience down  into  articulate  logical  state- 
ment we  have  moved  away  from  the  peculiarly 
living  quality  of  the  experience  itself.  Berg- 
son  finds  fullness  of  life  only  in  the  actual 
moment  of  living.  As  soon  as  we  get  far 
enough  away  from  the  experience  to  talk  about 
it  we  have  taken  a  step  away  from  life,  and  by 
the  time  we  have  reached  logical  articulation 
the  living  quality  is  almost  gone.  However 
this  may  be  as  concerns  life  in  general,  Berg- 
son  is  on  the  path  toward  a  truth  as  concerns 
religious  life.  The  language  cannot  keep 
pace  with  the  life. 

This  truth  becomes  all  the  more  apparent 
when  we  think  of  the  relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul  to  God.  There  is  always  need 
of  testimony  to  the  presence  of  God  from 
lips  touched  by  the  power  of  God.  There  is 
need  of  fuller  public  confession  of  sin  on  the 
part  of  many  who  profess  to  be  disciples.  It 
would  do  the  world  good  to  have  fuller  glimp- 
ses into  the  inner  life  of  the  saints.  The  or- 
dinary man  would  be  helped  if  he  could  open 
the  closet  door  of  the  saint  and  see  the  saint 
upon  his  knees.  Vast  benefit  would  accrue  to 
believers  everywhere  if  they  could  know  how 
widespread  is  the  fact  of  communion  between 

ids 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

the  greatest  lives  and  the  Divine  Life.  But 
there  is  in  these  experiences  themselves  an  ele- 
ment that  transcends  speech,  though  we  are 
not  now  referring  to  experiences  that  are 
transcendently  mystical.  There  are  some  ex- 
periences which  are  common  to  all;  any  intel- 
ligent Christian  can  understand  them;  but 
there  are  other  experiences  which  are  peculiar 
to  the  individual.  These  experiences  partake 
of  the  nature  of  confidences  between  the  finite 
soul  and  the  Infinite  Soul.  They  have  a  sacred- 
ness  like  the  sacredness  of  the  intercourse  be- 
tween two  friends  of  high  and  refined  feeling 
who  respect  each  the  confidences  of  the  other. 
We  may  well  be  thankful  for  the  emphasis 
upon  the  need  of  friendship  with  God.  We 
hear  much  about  the  love  of  God,  but  love  in 
the  sense  of  mutual  affection  is  possible  be- 
tween two  persons  who  may  not  be  able  to 
commune  together  in  the  full  sense  possible  to 
friends.  We  hear  much  about  men  as  children 
of  God  in  the  sense  that  men  are  the  little  chil- 
dren of  God.  We  should  be  grateful  for  the 
growing  emphasis  on  that  conception  of  men  as 
the  sons  of  God  which  implies  the  possibility 
of  that  maturer  companionship  which  we  think 
of  as  holding  between  friends.  Now,  friend- 
ship does  not  show  itself  altogether  in  out- 

196 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

right  utterance.  Understanding  between  two 
friends  may  be  so  complete  that  frequent 
speech  is  not  necessary.  Two  friends  may  be 
separated  by  the  width  of  the  globe,  with  no 
communication  passing  between  them,  and  yet 
each  may  feel  at  every  instant  that  he  thor- 
oughly understands  and  sympathizes  with  the 
other.  While  we  believe  that  God  is  always 
near  us,  there  are  times  when  in  a  sense  he 
seems  to  be  at  a  distance.  He  may  for  the 
moment  seem  to  hide  himself,  or  his  ways  may 
be  past  finding  out;  still,  there  is  possible  for 
the  saint  even  at  such  moments  an  unshaken 
trust  which  is  like  the  trust  which  holds  be- 
tween friends.  These  experiences  cannot  well 
be  talked  about,  but  the  very  fact  that  there 
are  such  experiences,  and,  we  believe,  such  ex- 
periences in  increasing  number,  makes  an 
atmosphere  in  which  restrained  and  dignified 
religious  expression  seems  more  and  more 
satisfyingly  beautiful. 

We  have  made  much  use  of  the  term  "re- 
straint." We  would  rather,  after  all,  insist 
that  as  we  stand  in  the  presence  of  what  is  fine 
in  itself  the  very  fineness  may  make  us  realize 
the  impotence  and  futility  of  our  expression. 
Suppose  we  stand  before  a  great  picture.  Any 
attempt  to  describe  the  picture  will  fall  short 

197 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

of  the  picture  itself.  We  have  all  noticed  the 
silence  that  prevails  in  art  galleries.  The 
silence  is  fitting.  Loudness  and  volubility  are 
out  of  place  in  the  presence  of  a  surpassing 
work  of  art.  So  with  any  manifestation  of 
transcendent  genius.  A  celebrated  American 
man  of  letters  has  told  of  the  evening  when 
with  a  companion  he  went  over  from  Cam- 
bridge to  Boston  to  hear  Edgar  Allan  Poe  read 
a  new  poem.  Poe  appeared  before  the  au- 
dience and  announced  that  he  would  not  read 
a  new  poem,  but  one  with  which  his  hearers 
were  already  familiar.  There  was  at  first  a 
rustle  of  disappointment  in  the  audience,  but 
all  became  quiet  as  Poe  started  to  read.  For 
the  auditors  perceived  at  once  that  Poe  was 
in  the  creative  mood  out  of  which  the  poem 
had  come.  As  Poe  read  on  through  the  stanzas 
his  hearers  realized  that  they  were  hearing  a 
genius  at  the  very  top  of  his  power.  When 
the  reading  finished,  the  audience  dispersed 
with  hardly  any  man  speaking  to  his  neighbor. 
The  two  friends  who  had  come  over  from  Cam- 
bridge walked  back  across  the  Charles  without 
the  utterance  of  a  word  until  they  had  reached 
their  home.  The  reason  was  not  that  any 
mystic  spell  had  been  cast  over  the  audience, 
but,  rather,  that  each  appreciated  so  fully  the 

198 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

surpassing  manifestation   of  genius  that  he 
felt  that  any  word  would  be  out  of  place. 

What,  now,  is  a  manifestation  of  literary 
genius  compared  with  a  manifestation  of  a 
spirit  of  nobility  or  of  self-sacrifice  in  its 
power  to  chain  the  attention  of  the  world  by 
the  very  fineness  of  the  deed  itself?  If  we  were 
to  drop  out  of  literature  and  song  the  inspira- 
tion which  has  come  from  the  contemplation 
of  deeds  fine  in  themselves,  we  would  have 
very  little  left.  The  traditions  of  armies  and 
navies  which  nations  most  fondly  cherish  are 
not  altogether  those  of  splendid  equipment  or 
of  excellence  in  drill  or  of  effectiveness  of 
onslaught  on  the  field  of  battle.  The  mind  of 
the  nation  singles  out  some  scene  of  outstand- 
ing valor,  some  moment  when  a  leader  has 
forgotten  his  own  peril  in  the  glory  of  aban- 
donment to  his  cause,  some  instant  when  a 
hero  leaps  to  inevitable  death  for  the  sake  of 
his  flag.  These  are  the  eternal  moments  and 
the  eternal  scenes  in  the  sense  that  they  have 
about  them  the  quality  of  eternity.  Or  some 
man  gives  his  life  for  his  fellows  in  time  of 
plague  or  surrenders  his  place  to  another  in 
the  lifeboat  of  a  sinking  ship.  These  are  the 
fine  things,  but  they  are  fine  beyond  all  de- 
scription or  expression. 

199 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

The  world  is  coming  more  and  more  to  see 
the  fineness  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  thing 
in  itself.  Even  on  the  theoretical  and  specu- 
lative side  there  is  an  element  of  protest 
against  atheism,  for  example,  which  is  deeper 
than  logic.  Our  sense  of  balance  presses  for 
a  fuller  universe  than  the  atheist  would  give 
us.  We  feel  that  the  material  must  be  bal- 
anced by  the  spiritual.  We  feel  that  things 
must  not  be  left  at  loose  ends,  that  there  must 
be  Some  One  for  whom  and  by  whom  the  loose 
ends  are  gathered  up  into  some  significant 
meaning.  We  crave  a  universe  with  a  fineness 
of  symmetry  on  its  own  account.  We  wish 
for  individual  lives  an  opportunity  to  come  to 
fullness  of  proportion.  We  feel  that  the 
quality  of  the  universe  must  be  protected  by  a 
force  that  will  give  it  an  inherent  nobility. 
Especially  do  we  crave  some  power  in  human 
lives  to  make  them  really  worthy  ends  in  them- 
selves. 

As  we  read  through  the  Gospels  we  find 
abundant  indications  that  Christ  was  think- 
ing of  his  kingdom  as  a  kingdom  of  ends  in 
themselves.  He  valued  men  not  as  invest- 
ments, not  as  instruments  altogether,  but  as 
ends  in  themselves.  He  would  have  men  serv- 
ants of  God,  but  after  the  men  have  done  all 

200 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

they  can  do  as  mere  servants  they  are  un- 
profitable servants.  Men  come  to  themselves 
when  they  come  to  be  sons  of  God.  Men  have 
value  in  the  sight  of  God  not  because  of  what 
they  can  do  for  God  so  much  as  because  of  the 
fact  that  they  can  enter  into  appreciative  com- 
panionship with  God.  When  we  think  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  as  an  existence  hereafter 
we  dream  of  a  realm  where  things  stand  in 
their  own  right  and  on  their  own  account.  In 
our  earthly  sphere  the  instrumental  phases  of 
existence  necessarily  engross  our  attention. 
We  are  putting  this  and  that  together  so  as  to 
get  something  else.  This,  however,  cannot  be 
the  final  phase.  We  long  for  a  realm  where 
the  fine  things  are  valued  simply  for  their  own 
fineness. 

The  words  of  Jesus  are  fine  on  their  own 
account.  His  life  was  a  life  fine  on  its  own 
account.  Both  his  teaching  and  his  life  come 
to  their  climax  in  the  cross,  and  the  spirit  of 
the  cross  is  fine  on  its  own  account.  A  dis- 
tinguished philosopher  once  said  that  Chris- 
tianity may  be  only  a  beautiful  dream,  but 
that  if  so,  it  is  the  most  beautiful  dream  that 
has  ever  come  to  the  minds  of  men.  We  be- 
lieve that  Christianity  is  more  than  a  dream. 
The  insistent  pressure  that  would  make  Chris- 

201 


THE   INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

tianity  more  truly  actual  is  a  craving  for  the 
fitness  of  things.  We  cannot  be  permanently 
satisfied  with  times  that  are  out  of  joint. 
Somewhere  we  must  reach  unity  and  consist- 
ency and  symmetry  and  fineness.  The  idea  of 
God  as  set  before  us  in  Christianity  is  a  beau- 
tiful idea  and  reaches  the  height  of  its  beauty 
in  the  revelation  of  Christ. 

Jesus  once  spoke  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
as  like  unto  a  merchantman  seeking  goodly 
pearls.  We  are  glad  that  Jesus  spoke  of  his 
kingdom  as  pearl.  He  used  other  figures  of 
speech  to  set  forth  the  predominantly  useful 
aspects  of  the  kingdom.  He  is  the  Physician 
who  will  heal  sick  souls.  He  is  the  Bread  of 
Life  upon  whom  all  may  feed.  The  kingdom 
of  the  Cross  is  medicine  for  disease  and  bread 
for  the  hungry.  But  it  is  pearl  also.  When 
we  think  of  pearl  we  lose  sight  of  the  more 
practical  orders  of  usefulness.  The  pearl  min- 
isters not  to  disease  and  not  to  hunger,  except 
to  that  nobler  hunger  for  what  is  fine  in  itself. 
The  teaching  of  Jesus,  the  cross  of  Christ,  the 
revelation  of  God — all  this  is  pearl.  We  shall 
always  need  the  presentation  of  the  cross  as 
redemption  from  sin  and  as  sustenance  for 
laboring,  struggling  souls.  Out  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  cross  as  redemption  and  nourishment 

202 


THE  ADORNMENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

there  will  come  increasingly  forceful  puttings 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  kingdom.  All  these  put- 
tings, however,  will  be  inadequate  if  there  is 
not  also  some  realization  of  the  pearl-like 
beauty  of  the  gospel.  The  man  who  sees  this 
beauty  may  not  be  as  outspoken  as  the  prophet 
who  would  bring  the  gospel  to  sick  souls,  or  as 
the  leader  who  would  minister  to  the  massive 
material  needs  of  men.  But  he  will  be  no  less 
effective  than  they.  He  will  bring  to  men  an 
atmosphere  of  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of 
the  gospel,  an  atmosphere  which  will  inevi- 
tably mellow  and  chasten  the  hardness  and 
barrenness  of  much  doctrinal  statement. 

To  conclude:  anything  which  begets  a  real 
sense  for  and  appreciation  of  the  beautiful 
will  make  for  the  increase  of  faith.  The  crav- 
ing for  beauty  is  so  much  a  part  of  us  that  it 
must  come  from  the  divine  source  of  beauty. 
Men  will  not  long  allow  the  good  and  the  true 
and  the  beautiful  to  stand  in  separate  spheres. 
The  beautiful  is  so  closely  linked  to  the  good 
and  true  that  if  the  beautiful  is  given  a  chance 
to  reveal  itself,  it  will  reveal  also  something  of 
the  true  and  good. 


VI 
THE  DEMAND  FOE  CHRIST 

ONE  of  the  striking  features  of  theological 
discussion  during  the  past  fifty  years  has  been 
the  renewed  prominence  given  to  Christ.  The 
biblical  studies  have  as  their  net  result  the 
teaching  that  all  parts  of  the  Scriptures  are 
to  be  judged  by  the  spirit  of  Christ  as  the  test 
and  standard  of  their  final  worth.  The  Church 
in  present-day  theory  has  its  value  as  an  in- 
strument for  getting  the  Christ  spirit  and  the 
Christ  thought  and  the  Christ  life  into  effective 
working  relationship  with  the  forces  of  the 
world.  Any  theory  or  system  which  aims  at 
the  uplift  of  the  world  takes  on  new  power 
when  it  can  claim  for  itself  the  sanction  of 
the  Christian  spirit  or  can  baptize  itself  with 
the  name  of  Christ. 

This  prominence  of  Christ  must  be  due  to 
the  satisfaction  of  demands  arising  out  of  hu- 
man needs.  We  cannot  feel  that  Christ  has 
in  any  artificial  fashion  been  pushed  to  the 
front.  His  doctrine  and  deed  and  spirit  must 

204 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

minister  to  the  needs  of  to-day  and  must 
satisfy  some  imperious  demands.  What  are 
some  of  these  demands,  and  how  do  preaching 
and  teaching  Christ  satisfy  them? 

In  the  first  place,  Christ  satisfies  the  de- 
mand for  some  final  fixity,  at  least  of  mean- 
ing, in  the  unceasing  flow  and  transformation 
of  the  universe.  An  impression  which  we 
bring  back  from  scientific  study  is  that  in  the 
natural  world  all  is  movement  and  change. 
In  our  own  bodies  we  live  through  an  inces- 
sant storm  of  change.  Organs  which  seem 
part  of  our  very  selves  are  renewed  day  by  day. 
All  organic  nature  sweeps  along  from  change 
to  change  with  incredible  swiftness.  Even 
classifications  of  forms  which  we  yesterday 
looked  upon  as  hard-and-fast  are  now  seen  to 
be  merely  provisional  and  temporary.  If  we 
think  we  can  find  fixity  even  in  the  inorganic 
realm,  we  find  that  we  must  correct  our  expec- 
tations. The  physicist  tells  us  that  the  most 
inert  masses  beneath  our  feet  are  throbbing 
with  energies  which  constantly  change  their 
direction,  and  the  chemist  smiles  when  we  ex- 
press our  naive  belief  that  the  elements  are 
necessarily  final  and  must  remain  as  they  now 
are  forever. 

We  are  aware  that  this  is  no  new  problem. 

205 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

The  Greeks  wrestled  with  the  puzzle  of  change 
and  fixity.  But  the  problem  is  really  vaster 
for  us  to-day  than  for  the  Greeks.  The  ma- 
terial universe  is  much  more  overwhelming. 
The  distances  are  longer  and  the  stretches  of 
time  are  measured  in  terms  which  would  have 
staggered  the  Greeks.  We  must  give  up  the 
attempt  to  find  any  really  fixed  point  in  the 
physical  system  itself.  What  seems  to  us  to 
be  permanent  is  only  activity  repeated  accord- 
ing to  a  law  which  calls  for  repetition.  The 
permanence  of  any  phase  of  the  physical  sys- 
tem is  like  the  permanence  of  a  flame  which 
may  stand  for  a  time  at  a  given  height  and 
burn  with  a  given  intensity,  but  which,  never- 
theless, is  in  constant  movement.  The  slight- 
est change  in  any  one  of  a  dozen  forces  work- 
ing through  the  flame  will  modify  its  intensity 
or  its  color,  or  extinguish  it  altogether.  The 
apparent  solidity  even  of  a  mountain  is,  when 
viewed  across  the  stretch  of  a  geological 
period,  largely  illusive,  depending  upon  the 
steadiness  of  forces  which  race  along  with 
vast  speed.  Somewhere,  we  know,  there  must 
be  a  relatively  permanent  factor  standing 
across  this  flow  of  things.  Else  we  never 
could  become  aware  that  there  is  a  flow. 
Existence  would  be  sliced  into  inconceiv- 

206 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CfiftlST 

ably  thin  sections,  each  of  which  would 
perish  as  soon  as  it  was  born.  Familiarity 
with  the  problem  of  knowledge  shows  us 
that  the  permanent  factor  must  be  in  the 
realm  of  spirit.  Without  entering  into  the 
metaphysics  of  psychological  existence,  we 
know  that  there  must  be  within  ourselves  some 
power  to  abide  from  moment  to  moment,  some 
power  to  weave  complexity  into  unity,  some 
memory  to  gather  up  the  past  and  make  it 
live  in  consciousness.  We  do  find  in  the  very 
act  of  knowing  some  ability  in  ourselves  to 
stand  across  the  stream  of  change  and  to  know 
the  stream  as  a  stream. 

But  this  does  not  help  us  much.  To  begin 
with,  change  enters  into  the  very  heart  of  our 
inmost  life.  We  are  the  same  that  we  were 
when  we  were  children,  and  yet  we  are  not  the 
same.  Our  spiritual  powers  rise  to  strength 
and  sink  to  decay.  More  significant  still,  our 
ideals  know  both  increase  and  loss.  The  social 
institutions  of  mankind,  the  ideas  which  fash- 
ion man's  companionships  with  his  fellows, 
his  conceptions  of  religion — all  these  are  sub- 
ject to  influences  which  lift  them  up  and  cast 
them  down.  Both  the  realm  of  nature  and 
the  inner  life  of  individuals  and  communities 
offer  little  in  the  way  of  a  permanent  resist- 

207 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

ance  to  the  stream  of  changes  in  the  midst  of 
which  we  live. 

It  is  in  Christianity  that  we  find  any  meas- 
ure of  relief  from  the  dizziness  of  contemplat- 
ing the  world  of  change.  The  relief  is  spir- 
itual. We  come  at  last  upon  an  idea  of  God 
and  an  idea  of  man  which  brings  at  least  a 
measure  of  meaning  into  the  vast  procession 
upon  which  we  gaze.  The  theistic  metaphy- 
sician arrives  at  the  end  of  his  reasonings  at 
the  idea  of  a  God  who  founds  change  without 
himself  being  involved  in  change.  The  theist 
holds  that  God  is  above  change,  not  in  the 
sense  that  change  means  nothing  to  him,  but 
in  the  sense  that  change  brings  nothing  to 
him  of  either  increase  or  loss  of  power.  Men 
are  above  change  in  the  sense  that  they  are 
able  to  hold  in  consciousness  the  varying  in- 
stants of  the  stream  long  enough  to  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  the  movement,  but  men 
are  in  change  in  the  sense  that  they  are  under 
the  law  of  development  and  are  dependent 
upon  the  changes  of  the  universe  for  the  at- 
tainment of  their  own  fullest  life.  While 
carrying  forward  the  changes  of  the  uni- 
verse, God  is  above  change  in  the  sense 
of  possessing  power  to  keep  the  entire  stream 
before  his  mind  and  to  withstand  any  suction 

208 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

of  the  stream  which  would  draw  him  into  its 
current.  We  are  not,  however,  so  much  con- 
cerned at  this  juncture  with  the  God  of  the 
mere  theist  as  with  the  God  of  the  Christian. 
Christ  set  before  men  an  ideal  of  an  unvary- 
ing love  at  the  heart  of  the  universe.  He  did 
not  pretend  to  construe  this  love  in  terms  of 
theoretical  statement.  He  simply  told  of  the 
love  of  the  Father  in  heaven,  whose  love  fail- 
eth  not,  and  he  set  this  love  on  high  in  his  own 
life  and  death.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  even 
this  ideal  of  Christ  changes,  but  it  changes  in 
a  fixed  direction.  It  changes  in  the  sense 
that  men  understand  it  better  as  the  years 
go  by.  The  love  of  God  knows  no  change, 
but  the  heart  of  man  reaches  after  and 
attains  unto  that  love  by  rhythmic  pulsings. 
God  is  Love.  God  is  the  Father  of  men. 
Christ's  ideal  is  that  men  should  come  to  such 
purity  of  heart  that  they  can  enter  into  com- 
panionship with  God  forever.  Our  thought  of 
God  and  of  Christ  and  of  man  is  under  the  law 
of  change,  but  the  change  is  in  a  fixed  direc- 
tion from  glory  to  glory. 

Again,  there  is  a  real  though  perhaps  uncon 
scious  demand  for  Christ  to-day — that  is  to 
say,  for  the  thought  and  deed  and  spirit  of 
Christ  set  before  us  in  the  New  Testament — 

209 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

as  a  supplement  and  corrective  for  the  results 
of  the  scientific  method  in  the  study  of  the 
Scriptures.  We  are  not  likely  to  overempha- 
size the  importance  of  modern  biblical  study 
for  the  better  understanding  of  the  Bible. 
These  studies  have  given  the  Book  new  vital- 
ity. They  have  helped  us  to  discern  a  new 
permanence  in  both  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments and  to  cast  out  the  incidental  and  non- 
essential.  We  see  as  never  before  the  trend  of 
the  old  national  life  of  the  Jews  toward  Christ, 
the  satisfaction  of  their  hopes  and  of  the  hopes 
of  the  world  in  Christ,  and  the  mighty  mo- 
mentum of  the  early  apostolic  enthusiasm. 
One  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  modern 
science  is  the  success  which  has  followed  the 
application  of  the  scientific  method  to  scrip- 
tural study.  Even  where  the  students  of  the 
Scriptures  have  been  somewhat  hostile  to  the 
claims  of  orthodox  Christianity  the  final  re- 
sults have  been  good.  The  most  hostile  critic 
has  often  brought  forth  a  theory  worthy  of 
consideration,  and  the  discussion  of  the  theory 
has  put  the  Church  on  the  path  of  a  truth 
whose  existence  the  hostile  critic  may  not  of 
himself  have  suspected. 

Very  little  harm  has  been  done  by  the  hos- 
tile critic  of  the  Scriptures.     Some  harm  is 

210 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

continually  wrought  by  the  student  who  is  an 
exponent  of  the  scientific  method  and  is  noth- 
ing else.  Such  a  student  is  apt  to  look  upon 
the  Scriptures  merely  as  an  intellectually  con- 
trived mechanism.  He  does  not  sense  the 
vividness  and  warmth  of  the  life  which  plays 
across  the  pages  of  the  Scriptures;  nor  does 
he  often  enough  reflect  that  the  Scriptures 
were  written  by  human  beings.  Dealing  with 
the  Book  thus  as  a  merely  intellectual  contri- 
vance, he  may  reach  all  manner  of  astounding 
conclusions.  If  he  finds  passages  in  a  scrip- 
tural book  which  seem  to  him  to  be  contradic- 
tory to  each  other,  he  will  have  it  that  the 
passages  must  have  come  from  different 
periods  of  history  or  have  been  written  by 
different  hands.  If  he  discovers  analogies  be- 
tween scriptural  accounts  and  accounts  in 
other  literatures  which  are  evidently  solar 
myths,  he  is  apt  to  conclude  at  once  that  the 
scriptural  narratives  are  largely  solar  myths. 
He  forgets  that  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  move 
even  through  current  history  and  resolve 
many  of  the  men  of  our  own  time  into  solar 
myths!  Students  of  the  curious  in  literature 
will  remember  that  an  acute  Frenchman  once 
wrote  a  satire  to  prove  that  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte was  a  sun  myth.  Napoleon  had  been 

211 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

dead  only  a  few  years  when  the  satire  was 
written,  but  the  author  proved  conclusively 
that  the  Corsican  was  a  myth.  Napoleon,  for 
example,  prevailed  in  the  south,  as  in  Egypt, 
and  lost  in  the  north,  as  in  the  Russian  cam- 
paign. The  sun  likewise  prevails  in  the  south 
and  loses  strength  in  the  north.  This  argu- 
ment is  fully  as  conclusive  as  the  argument 
that  Jacob  must  be  regarded  as  a  sun  myth 
because  on  one  occasion  the  sun  rose  upon 
him !  We  would  not  deny  the  worth  of  scien- 
tific study  which  proceeds  upon  the  principle 
of  analogy,  but  we  would  insist  that  scientific 
study  must  be  supplemented  and  corrected  by 
an  understanding  of  the  motives  and  proc- 
esses of  real  life.  The  method  of  the  division 
and  reassignment  of  scriptural  documents  be- 
cause of  differences  discovered  in  passages 
which  we  have  thought  of  as  constituting  a 
unified  whole  is  fruitful.  But  the  differences 
must  be  really  significant.  If  we  find  side  by 
side  allusions  to  customs  of  a  particular  time 
and  allusions  to  customs  of  two  centuries 
later,  we  know  that  the  document  cannot  have 
been  written  at  the  period  of  the  earlier  cus- 
toms. Or,  if  the  ideas  in  the  different  parts 
of  a  single  document  are  widely  divergent 
from  each  other,  the  parts  must  clearly  have 

212 


THE  DEMAND  FOE  CHRIST 

come  from  differing  periods.  But  so  far  as 
minor  differences  are  concerned,  these  can 
easily  be  found  in  the  works  of  a  single  author. 
Men  speak  now  with  one  set  of  phrases  and 
now  with  another.  They  become  possessed  of 
certain  ideas  which  hold  them  for  a  time,  and 
then  they  are  captivated  by  another  set.  We 
would  not  have  to  go  far  into  the  authenticated 
reports  of  speeches  delivered  in  this  year  of 
nineteen  hundred  and  twelve  to  discover  the 
most  glaring  contradictions  in  the  utterances 
of  this  or  that  public  leader.  A  merely  in- 
tellectualistic  critic  could  on  the  basis  of  these 
utterances  split  more  than  one  public  char- 
acter to-day  into  at  least  a  dozen  characters. 

All  this  is  true  of  biblical  study  in  general. 
When  we  come  to  the  study  of  the  Gospels  we 
must  be  careful  to  supplement  the  scientific 
method  with  genuine  appreciation  of  the  spirit 
of  Christianity.  Some  students  in  our  own 
day  have  made  a  good  deal  of  stir  by  profess- 
ing to  have  proved  that  Jesus  never  existed. 
The  reasoning  may  seem  very  conclusive  to 
readers  of  a  certain  type.  The  best  corrective 
against  such  excess  is  in  an  attempt  to  seize 
the  spirit  of  the  gospel  narrative  concerning 
Jesus — to  take  the  portrait  just  as  it  stands 
and  try  to  realize  the  spiritual  content,  to 

213 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

attempt  to  understand  the  implications  of 
Christ's  doctrine  of  God  and  of  man.  When 
the  Gospels  are  approached  thus  we  have  a 
sense  as  of  having  come  into  touch  with  some- 
thing actual  and  real.  If  the  Scripture  is 
studied  by  a  man  who  is  trying  to  order  his 
life  according  to  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, such  a  man  has  a  corrective  against  the 
excesses  of  the  purely  scientific  method  like 
the  corrective  which  contact  with  real  life 
always  affords. 

The  scientific  student  becomes  very  im- 
patient with  the  popular  indifference  to  some 
of  his  theories  concerning  the  beginnings  of 
Christianity.  He  wonders  that  even  intelli- 
gent Christians  do  not  seem  to  appreciate  the 
results  of  his  investigation.  The  popular  im- 
patience is  not  with  the  scientific  method  as 
such.  People  in  general  recognize  the  virtue 
of  that  method.  The  indifference  arises  out 
of  the  fact  that  there  is  on  the  part  of  the 
Church  as  a  whole  a  general  knowledge  of 
Christ  and  a  general  demand  for  him.  In 
specific  items  this  knowledge  and  demand  need 
correction,  but  likewise  the  specific  findings 
of  the  scientific  student  need  correction  by  a 
general  appreciation  of  Christ's  thought  of 
Go<J  and  of  man  and  of  his  setting  on  high  of 

214 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

that  thought  in  his  own  life  and  death.  The 
real  dangers  in  the  scientific  study  of  the 
Scriptures  are  the  dangers  of  scientific  study 
anywhere,  the  dangers  which  beset  the  special- 
ists. If  it  is  true  that  the  specialist  in  me- 
chanics or  medicine  or  law  is  safe  only  as  he 
is  familiar  with  the  general  and  fundamental 
truths  which  lie  at  the  base  of  his  science  in 
common  with  other  kindred  sciences,  so  it  is 
also  true  that  the  scientific  student  of  the 
Scriptures  is  likely  to  lose  himself  and  lead 
others  astray  if  he  has  not  that  power  to  see 
truth  steadily  and  to  see  it  whole  which  should 
mark  the  thinking  of  the  Christian  disciple. 

Lest  all  this  may  seem  critical  of  biblical 
students,  we  again  profess  our  admiration  for 
the  results  of  biblical  study.  We  have  said 
that  we  do  not  fear  the  hostile  critic  of  Chris- 
tianity. May  we  be  permitted  also  to  say  that 
we  do  not  much  fear  even  the  too  technical, 
over-specialized  critic?  For  the  general  im- 
pression which  the  Christ  life  as  a  whole  makes 
upon  modern  life  as  a  whole,  and  the  general 
satisfaction  of  modern  life  with  that  impres- 
sion, is  a  corrective  and  safeguard  against  any 
evils  likely  to  come  from  scientific  biblical  re- 
search. The  very  extremeness  of  the  utter- 
ances of  some  biblical  students  has  made  a 

215 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

fresh  demand  for  the  presentation  of  the 
Christ-life  and  teaching  in  their  large  and 
fundamental  outlines.  As  a  reaction  from 
overemphasis  on  microscopic  detail  there  is 
renewed  demand  to-day  for  emphasis  on  the 
outline  ideas  of  Christian  teaching.  After 
minute  study  of  the  trees  men  are  again  call- 
ing for  a  survey  of  the  sweep  and  majesty  of 
the  forest. 

In  our  second  lecture  we  sketched  the  prog- 
ress of  modern  philosophy  from  materialism 
through  idealism  to  personalism  and  pragma- 
tism. We  here  note  the  impulse  which  pre- 
vails in  practically  all  schools  of  philosophy 
to  attempt  to  connect  philosophic  systems 
with  the  teaching  and  spirit  of  Christ.  All  the 
world  knows  how  Christian  thinking  has  of 
late  been  friendly  to  the  evolutionary  hy- 
pothesis, and  how  welcome  this  hospitality  on 
the  part  of  Christianity  has  been  to  the  large 
body  of  evolutionists  themselves.  The  reason 
is  not  merely  that  philosophic  critics  have 
drawn  a  distinction  between  evolution  as  an 
order  of  progress  and  evolution  as  a  theory  of 
causation,  and  have  pointed  out  that  there  is 
nothing  hostile  to  Christianity  in  evolution  as 
an  order  of  progress.  The  scientific  thinkers 
realize  the  hold  which  Christ  has  on  the  life  of 

216 


THE  DEMAND  FOE  CHRIST 

the  world.  If  such  scientists  are  not  them- 
selves materialistically  inclined  they  feel  that 
this  grasp  of  Christ  is  one  of  the  great  cosmic 
forces,  and  they  feel  also  that  evolution  has 
not  come  to  its  final  statement  so  long  as  it 
does  not  take  account  of  this  grasp.  More- 
over, the  evolutionary  process  by  itself  pre- 
sents rather  a  grim  spectacle.  We  cannot 
help  being  impressed  with  the  enormity  of  the 
cost  with  which  the  evolutionary  factors  do 
their  work.  Many  evolutionists,  indeed,  teach 
that  there  is  another  aspect  beyond  mere  strug- 
gle for  survival,  namely,  the  struggle  for  the 
life  of  others.  But  the  emphasis  on  the  strug- 
gle for  the  life  of  others  can  hardly  be  effective 
without  reference  to  the  teaching  and  spirit  of 
Christ.  The  evolutionary  procession  itself 
raises  many  questions.  From  where  to  where 
is  the  procession  moving?  Who  is  leading  the 
procession?  What  is  the  aim  of  the  proces- 
sion? Why  should  there  be  a  procession? 
Who  gives  it  marching  orders  and  sets  its 
pace?  Has  the  procession  any  halting  place? 
All  these  problems  clamor  for  an  answer. 
There  is  no  answer  simply  from  contemplat- 
ing the  procession  itself.  Hence  there  is  a 
rather  general  agreement  to-day  that  prin- 
ciples at  least  measurably  Christian  must  be 

217 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

called  in  before  we  can  make  much  of  evo- 
lution. 

Another  student  may  choose  to  remain  an 
idealist  in  spite  of  the  modern  movement  away 
from  idealism  of  the  stricter  sort.  But  any 
really  serious-minded  person  soon  feels  that 
idealism  is  rather  barren  if  there  cannot  be  an 
answer  to  the  question  as  to  whose  ideas  or 
what  ideas  are  constitutive  of  reality.  There 
are  ideas  and  ideas.  All  ideas  are  not  on  the 
same  plane.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that 
the  more  morally  and  spiritually  minded  ideal- 
ists find  delight  in  the  prologue  to  the  fourth 
Gospel.  They  turn  to  Christ  as  the  Word  that 
really  utters  the  universe — as  the  Keason, 
which,  immanent  in  the  universe,  comes  to 
personal  expression  in  human  terms.  The  doc- 
trine of  the  Logos  is  especially  attractive  to 
members  of  the  Hegelian  school.  The  Hege- 
lians also  seem  willing  to  use  such  terms  as 
Incarnation  and  Atonement.  True,  they  do 
not  ordinarily  use  these  terms  in  the  orthodox 
sense,  but  the  very  use  of  the  terms  shows  the 
ready  willingness  of  this  school  of  philosophy 
to  reach  out  a  hand  almost  of  supplication  to- 
ward Christianity. 

Those  who  have  broken  away  from  idealism 
and  have  become  personalists  likewise  feel  the 

218 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CTIRIST 

need  of  some  exemplar  or  leader  who  shall 
really  interpret  the  meaning  of  personal  ex- 
istence. Suppose  that  we  grant  for  the  mo- 
ment the  extreme  claims  of  some  personalists 
that  all  individual  souls  have  existed  in  their 
individuality  from  eternity.  Even  with  this 
admission  we  must  be  impressed  with  the  dif- 
ference in  persons.  If  there  is  to  be  develop- 
ment in  persons,  the  most  thoroughgoing  in- 
dividualist would  have  the  worst  persons  catch 
something  of  the  spirit  of  the  better  persons. 
We  cannot  find  a  suitable  ideal  in  ourselves  or 
in  our  neighbors  or  in  the  mass  of  mankind. 
Almost  any  fair-minded  student  will  admit 
that,  without  regard  to  the  historical  and 
critical  issues  involved  in  the  study  of  the 
Gospels,  the  acceptance  of  the  portrait  of 
Jesus  substantially  as  that  portrait  is  put  be- 
fore us  in  the  New  Testament  is  the  most  im- 
perative duty  for  any  doctrine  of  personalism. 
The  doctrine  of  personalism  must  stand  or 
fall  with  the  type  of  person  the  theory  accepts 
as  standard.  If  personalism  is  to  mean  the 
wild  lunging  about  of  selfish  individuals,  each 
acting  out  the  lower  impulses  of  his  own  life, 
we  have  anarchy ;  and  any  system  which  leads 
to  anarchy  must  be  cast  out.  If  the  normal  in 
human  life  is  put  above  the  actual  or  the  aver- 

219 


THE    INCREASE    OP    FAITH 

age  state  of  men,  we  must  find  the  normal 
most  adequately  set  forth  in  the  great  individ- 
uals of  human  history.  The  personal  moun- 
tain peaks  must  give  direction  to  the  move- 
ment of  men  through  their  earthly  pilgrimage ; 
all  of  which  makes  a  demand  for  human  per- 
sonality interpreted  in  terms  of  Christ  as  the 
Supreme  Norm  and  Standard. 

If  personalism  must  finally  turn  toward 
Christ,  so  also  must  pragmatism.  We  have 
already  enumerated  some  conditions  which 
pragmatism  must  meet  in  order  to  satisfy  the 
largest  human  demands.  Too  many  pragma- 
tists  speak  as  if  their  creed  means  that  a  man 
may  believe  whatever  happens  to  agree  with 
him.  Before  we  accept  such  a  statement  we 
must  know  what  the  word  "agree"  means. 
The  doctrine  that  a  man  may  believe  whatever 
agrees  with  him  is  not  much  more  intelligent 
than  the  doctrine  that  a  man  may  eat  whatever 
agrees  with  him.  "Agree"  ought  certainly  to 
mean  more  than  to  taste  pleasant.  Some 
foods  taste  pleasant,  but  are  poisonous  or  in- 
nutritious  or  unsubstantial.  A  man  may,  in- 
deed, eat  whatever  agrees  with  him,  but  if  he  is 
a  normal  man  the  food  must  partake  of  the 
fundamental  elements  which  nourish  and  build 
up  the  body.  Likewise  a  man  may  believe 

220 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

whatever  agrees  with  him,  but  his  belief  ought 
to  nourish  and  build  up  his  entire  life.  Here, 
again,  we  need  a  norm  and  a  standard.  Chris- 
tianity uses  the  pragmatic  method,  but  finds 
the  norm  and  standard  in  Christ.  Without  sub- 
scribing to  the  doctrine  that  pragmatism  has 
other  than  merely  instrumental  value,  we  may 
say  that  pragmatism  does  seem  wonderfully 
fitted  to  be  a  useful  tool  for  Christianity. 
Every  man  that  willeth  to  do  the  will  of  God 
comes  into  sympathy  at  least  with  the  spirit 
of  Christ.  But  Christianity  brings  elements 
into  pragmatism  that  may  not  be  acceptable  to 
the  philosophical  adherents  of  the  system. 
Christianity  accepts  the  truth  that  we  learn 
by  doing  and  that  the  final  tests  are  the  tests 
of  life.  In  real  life — by  which  we  mean  life 
at  its  highest  and  best — cross-bearing  plays  a 
part.  Not  by  accident  did  the  Master  say  that 
any  man  who  would  be  his  disciple  must  take 
up  a  cross  daily.  Now,  the  objection  to  cross- 
bearing  is  that  it  seems  to  ask  us  to  believe 
and  do  what  does  not  promise  to  agree  with  us. 
We  come  again  upon  the  age-old  paradox  of 
Christianity  that  a  man  who  would  save  his 
life  must  lose  it.  The  danger  with  pragmatism 
is  that  it  tends  to  become  too  easy.  In  the 
presence  of  hard  philosophic  problems  it  may 

221 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

turn  away  from  a  rugged  wrestling  on  the 
ground  that  rugged  wrestling  is  too  hard.  So 
in  the  presence  of  the  cross.  The  pragma  tist 
may,  like  Peter  of  old,  glimpse  a  truth  which 
means  the  highest  and  fullest  life,  and  yet  in 
the  next  instant  deserve  a  rebuke  for  an  un- 
willingness to  master  the  implications  of  the 
truth  in  cross-bearing.  If  pragmatism  is  to 
remain  respectable  as  the  statement  of  a  philo- 
sophic method,  it  needs  something  or  some  one 
to  keep  it  in  the  straight  and  narrow  path. 
The  temptation  of  pragmatism  is  to  slip  over 
to  the  broad  way.  There  are  many  pragma- 
tists  in  the  broad  way.  Pragmatism  needs  to 
be  kept  difficult.  Before  it  can  be  discipline 
even  for  human  minds  it  must  exact  some- 
thing of  the  steadiness  of  mental  effort  which 
the  great  idealistic  systems  require.  Before 
pragmatism  can  be  a  discipline  for  the  entire 
life  it  must  see  and  lay  stress  upon  the  signi- 
ficance of  cross-bearing  for  the  attainment  of 
spiritual  insight.  Much  learning,  indeed, 
comes  out  of  reflective  brooding;  much  out  of 
vigorous  and  persistent  doing ;  much  out  of  un- 
selfish suffering.  Bearing  the  cross  does  not 
imply  asceticism;  against  asceticism  or  any 
other  unnatural  abnormality  we  strenuously 
protest.  Christianity  does  not  enjoin  need- 

222 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

less  suffering.  It  does  not  even  exalt  the  spirit 
which  would  seek  after  suffering,  but  it  does 
compel  men  to  accept  and  walk  in  the  straight 
and  narrow  way  which  leads  to  life.  If  prag- 
matism ever  attains  to  great  power,  it  will 
have  to  heed  the  world's  demand  for  considera- 
tion of  that  cross  which  represents  the  divine 
willingness  to  bear  burdens  for  the  sake  of 
others.  Upon  one  occasion  Jesus  told  his  dis- 
ciples to  rejoice  when  men  persecuted  them 
and  said  all  manner  of  evil  against  them 
falsely  for  the  sake  of  truth,  "for  so  persecuted 
they  the  prophets  which  were  before  you." 
The  words  would  seem  to  give  us  some  hint 
as  to  a  method  of  coming  to  an  understanding 
of  the  prophets.  There  might  conceivably  be 
many  ways  of  studying  the  life  of  a  prophet. 
One  might  read,  mark,  and  inwardly  digest  all 
the  words  of  a  prophet.  Then  one  might  visit 
the  scenes  of  the  prophet's  life  and  attempt 
to  reproduce  in  imagination  the  great  events 
which  the  force  of  the  prophet  had  brought  to 
pass.  In  other  words,  one  might  learn  some- 
thing of  a  prophet  by  looking  backward  at  the 
prophet  himself.  But  one  could  learn  more 
by  looking  around  upon  conditions  like  those 
which  made  the  prophet  burn  with  wrath  and 
then  by  casting  oneself  against  the  evils  which 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

call  for  a  prophet's  fire.  When  one  had  met 
something  of  the  resistant  force  of  evil  after 
attacking  that  evil,  when  one  had  been  perse- 
cuted for  the  sake  of  the  truth,  then,  indeed, 
one  might  begin  to  understand  the  prophets  of 
old.  The  best  way  to  study  Elijah  is  to  rebuke 
evils  like  those  which  Elijah  rebuked.  What- 
ever the  real  prophet  does  he  does  not  follow 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  He  cuts  new 
channels  even  if  he  has  to  receive  upon  him- 
self all  the  shock  which  comes  to  the  cutting 
edge.  Pragmatism  as  method  of  learning  the 
truths  supremely  worth  while  must  keep  off 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  Whatever  else 
Christ  may  or  may  not  do  as  a  leader  of  men, 
he  will  not  lead  them  along  the  lines  of  least 
resistance. 

The  modern  social  movements  also  make  a 
demand  for  a  vigorous  statement  and  restate- 
ment of  the  thought  and  spirit  of  Christ. 
Such  a  statement  is  clearly  needed  to  help  us 
keep  our  balance  between  the  swing  toward 
masses  which  would  submerge  the  individual 
and  the  opposite  swing  toward  individuals 
which  would  ignore  the  organic  dependence  of 
individuals  on  each  other.  We  may  say,  on 
the  one  hand,  that  Christ  discovered  the  in- 
dividual— or,  rather,  that  he  discovers  individ- 

224 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

uals — and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  he  gave 
new  force  to  the  social  relationships  of  in- 
dividuals. There  is  little  in  the  words  of  Jesus 
to  suggest  such  terms  as  "masses,"  or  "hu- 
manity," or  "mankind."  If  he  wishes  to  speak 
of  mankind  he  says  "all  men."  Yet  even  the 
prayer  which  the  Master  holds  up  as  a  model 
is  predominantly  social.  "Our  Father,"  "our 
daily  bread,"  "forgive  us  our  trespasses  as  we 
forgive,"  "lead  us  not  into  temptation" — ex- 
pressions like  these  do  not  suggest  unrelated 
individuals.  They  suggest  an  organism  which, 
in  the  thought  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity, 
is  to  be  coextensive  with  humanity.  Yet  Jesus 
does  not  suggest  the  term  "organism"  or  "hu- 
manity." He  suggests  the  idea  of  men  as  mem- 
bers of  a  family. 

The  contribution  of  Jesus  to  the  social  move- 
ment is  the  force  which  he  has  put  into  the 
thought  of  men  as  members  of  a  family.  Bio- 
logical terms  like  "social  organism,"  mechani- 
cal and  artificial  terms  which  abound  in  many 
theories  of  the  state  as  a  deliberate  creation, 
legal  expressions  like  "rights"  and  "implied 
contracts" — these  do  not  have  the  force  of  the 
emphasis  of  Jesus  on  men  as  members  of  a 
family.  Social  theories  depend  for  much  of 
their  force  on  the  religious  ideas  back  of  them 

225 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

or  implied  in  them.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
claim  that  no  social  theory  becomes  really 
dynamic  or  vital  until  it  has  taken  on  a  re- 
ligious form,  or  has  been  incorporated  with 
some  religious  theory,  or  has,  at  least,  been 
touched  with  religious  fervor.  Christ's 
thought  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  is  joined 
to  his  thought  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  God 
is  the  Head  of  the  family.  The  service  of  our 
brothers  is  at  the  same  time  a  service  of  the 
Father.  Most  social  theories,  however,  which 
speak  of  masses  and  humanity  have  as  their 
religious  presupposition  a  sort  of  pantheistic 
notion  of  Humanity  as  itself  God.  Many  ad- 
herents of  such  pantheism  wax  very  eloquent 
in  their  advocacy  of  Humanity  as  the  sole  and 
sufficient  object  of  religious  effort.  But  such 
social  enthusiasm  can  be  kept  up  only  as  it  is 
heated  so  high  that  any  coolness  of  reflection 
is  out  of  the  question,  for  such  reflection  shows 
that  Humanity,  after  all,  is  but  a  class  term. 
The  concrete  facts  are  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren in  various  relationships  to  one  another. 
In  the  Christian  view  we  find  an  adequate  mo- 
tive for  devotion  to  the  help  of  men  in  the  fact 
of  what  they  are.  They  are  children  of  the 
Father  in  heaven.  We  show  our  worshipful 
spirit  toward  God  by  devotion  to  men,  but  we 

226 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

do  not  find  in  the  men  themselves  a  full  object 
of  worship.  What  is  Humanity?  Humanity 
is  human  beings — present,  past,  and  to  come. 
But  human  beings  of  to-day  do  not  give  us  a 
God  that  we  can  worship,  no  matter  how  pan- 
theistic our  theory  may  be.  Human  beings  of 
the  past  were  probably  not  much  better,  and 
posterity  has  not  yet  arrived.  There  is  not 
sufficient  force  in  the  duty  of  working  for  pos- 
terity to  make  the  duty  altogether  self-impel- 
ling. We  ourselves  are  the  posterity  of  those 
who  have  gone  before,  and  our  posterity  may 
not  be  very  greatly  different  from  ourselves. 
We  can,  however,  be  very  patient  with  the 
frailties  of  actual  people  if  we  can  think  of 
them  as  objects  of  the  Divine  Love.  Enthu- 
siasm for  brotherhood  which  does  not  in  some 
way  connect  itself  with  the  idea  of  the  divine 
Fatherhood  is  apt  to  lack  staying  qualities. 
The  social  workers  who  cut  themselves  away 
from  Christian  teaching  as  to  the  divine 
Fatherhood  find  sooner  or  later  that  they  have 
cut  themselves  away  from  a  center  of  power. 
Social  movements  which  aim  at  bringing  in 
the  universal  brotherhood  are  apt  in  the  end 
to  create,  or  at  least  to  reenforce,  the  idea  of 
God  as  Father. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  men  as  members 

227 


THE    INCEEASE    OF    FAITH 

of  a  vast  family  gives  too  a  correction  of  some 
doctrines  of  human  equality  which  are  sadly 
needed.  The  mere  theorist  is  apt  to  come  for- 
ward with  some  statement  of  the  doctrine  of 
equality  which  makes  all  men  alike  equal  in 
all  things ;  and  such  statements,  wide  of  reality 
in  themselves,  lead  to  a  practical  result  which 
is  wide  of  reality.  In  the  Christian  thought 
all  men  are  equal  in  the  sense  that  all  are  born 
into  the  divine  family.  All  are  equal  in  the 
sense  that  all  are  alike  the  objects  of  the  Divine 
Love.  But  all  are  not  equal  in  the  sense  that 
all  have  equal  ability.  Anyone  who  sees  what 
Christianity  aims  at  will  do  all  he  can  to  re- 
lieve men  of  the  artificial  inequalities  in  which 
the  present  order  abounds ;  but  some  inequali- 
ties are  deep-seated.  Much  of  the  talk  about 
equality  rests  on  the  fancy  that  human  char- 
acteristics are  commensurable,  as  if  there  were 
any  way  of  showing  that  the  ability  of  the 
butcher  is  equal  to  that  of  the  baker,  or  that  of 
the  general  equal  to  that  of  the  inventor,  or 
that  of  the  painter  equal  to  that  of  the  novelist. 
Moreover,  though  all  are  children  of  the  divine 
Father,  all  are  not  equally  responsive  to  the 
Father's  love.  All  of  which  would  seem  to  be 
self-evident,  but  much  of  which  lacks  recogni- 
tion by  social  theorists.  On  the  whole,  how- 

228 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

ever,  there  is  increasing  demand  for  the  Chris- 
tian conception  as  best  fitted  to  the  facts  of 
society. 

There  is  growing  demand  also  for  the  Chris- 
tian method  in  social  reform.  That  method  is 
one  of  radicalism,  but  not  the  radicalism  of  the 
ax.  In  one  of  his  parables  Jesus  tells  of  the 
tree  cumbering  the  ground.  A  radical  with  an 
ax  proposed  to  cut  the  tree  down,  but  another 
radical  with  a  spade  proposed  to  dig  about  the 
roots  and  give  them  a  chance.  Radicalism 
deals  with  roots.  The  man  who  waters  roots 
may  be  as  truly  a  radical  as  the  man  who  grubs 
up  roots.  Some  social  institutions  have  not  yet 
had  a  chance.  They  are  good  enough  in  them- 
selves, but  their  roots  lack  water.  Much  bitter 
attack  on  industrial,  political,  ecclesiastical, 
educational,  and  other  institutions  is  the  radi- 
calism of  the  ax,  while  what  is  needed  is  the 
radicalism  of  the  spade.  And  this  in  the  end 
comes  down  to  the  improvement  of  the  persons 
who  make  up  the  social  body.  As  an  extreme 
illustration  take  the  furious  attacks  on  mar- 
riage and  the  family  to  which  extreme  radicals 
continually  give  utterance.  Improvements  in 
marriage  are  improvements  in  the  relations  of 
married  persons,  and  this  in  turn  means  im- 
provements in  the  persons  themselves.  Per- 

229 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

sons  marry  from  wrong  motive,  or  in  ignorance 
of  the  character  of  the  future  partner,  or  with 
no  adequate  sense  of  the  responsibilities  in- 
volved in  the  marriage  relation.  Much  in- 
justice results  and  many  innocent  suffer. 
Marriage  laws  no  doubt  need  improvement, 
but  the  fundamental  need  is  an  improvement 
of  persons.  So  with  many  other  institutions. 
As  the  readers  of  an  earlier  chapter  will  recall, 
we  hold  no  brief  for  industrial  institutions, 
but  even  in  our  campaigns  against  institutions 
most  open  to  question  we  must  remember  that 
we  must  in  the  end  reach  persons.  We  must 
so  deal  with  institutions  as  to  reduce  tempta- 
tion to  evil-doing  to  the  minimum.  Some  in- 
stitutions to-day  put  before  men  temptations 
which  only  the  strongest  wills  can  withstand. 
The  institutions  must,  therefore,  be  modified 
or  abolished.  But  the  final  welfare  of  society 
cannot  depend  on  abolishing  institutions. 
Men  must  be  brought  to  the  place  where  they 
are  above  using  a  social  institution  for  mere 
personal  profit,  and  other  men  must  develop 
the  power  to  withstand  the  temptations  inevi- 
table in  any  system.  For  illustration,  think 
of  the  precaution  taken  to-day  to  guard  the 
ballot.  Not  so  very  long  ago  election  frauds 
by  wholesale  were  possible.  It  was  easy  to  put 

230 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

a  ballot  in  a  man's  hand  and  see  that  he  put 
the  vote  in  the  box.  It  was  easy  to  vote  a  man 
more  than  once.  The  Australian  system  did 
away  with  the  first  possibility,  and  thus  re- 
duced the  chances  of  election  bribery.  Regis- 
tration systems  have  practically  done  away 
with  the  second  possibility.  But  do  the  Aus- 
tralian ballot  and  registration  make  democ- 
racy safe?  The  only  safety  is  in  the  character 
of  the  man  inside  the  voting  booth.  Democ- 
racy depends  for  its  virtue  on  the  goodness  of 
good  men.  If  the  example  of  Christ  means 
anything,  it  means  that  the  radical  method  of 
social  reform  is  the  deep  spiritual  appeal 
which  touches  men  in  the  depths.  Christ  re- 
fused to  appeal  to  men  by  turning  stones  into 
bread.  That  was  not  radical  enough.  He  re- 
fused to  astonish  them  into  submission  by 
marvels.  That  was  not  radical  enough.  He 
refused  to  make  political  alliances.  They  were 
not  radical  enough.  He  chose,  rather,  to  strike 
to  the  invisible  center  with  an  appeal  for  love 
of  God  and  man  which  sweeps  all  the  life  into 
its  current. 

We  have  seen  that  the  great  word  in  current 
ethical  life  is  obligation.  The  teaching  of 
Christ  aids  the  ethical  life  not  so  much  by 
giving  a  new  set  of  duties  as  by  giving  new 

231 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

force  to  the  ideas  which  condition  ethical  de- 
velopment. Christianity  does  not  advance  new 
ethical  notions.  It  is  possible  to  find  the 
ethical  precepts  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, or  even  in  non-Christian  systems.  The 
difference  is  in  the  religious  ideas  which  place 
a  sky  over  the  earth  which  the  ethical  teachers 
give  us.  We  have  seen  that  the  ethical  em- 
phasis to-day  has  a  mighty  influence  on  the 
shaping  of  religious  ideas.  The  religious  ideas 
in  turn  repay  the  debt  by  giving  new  force  to 
the  moral  ideas.  There  are  some  persons  who 
declare  that  they  can  do  the  right  for  the 
right's  own  sake  without  any  thought  of  re- 
ligious presuppositions,  and  these  persons  are 
at  times  inclined  to  sneer  at  those  who  demand 
religious  presuppositions.  Kant's  thought  of 
God,  freedom,  and  immortality  as  implications 
of  the  moral  nature  does  not  seem  to  some  who 
profess  to  worship  right  for  right's  own  sake 
to  be  especially  worthy.  But  those  who  feel 
the  need  of  the  implications  feel  that  need  not 
because  of  any  less  loyalty  to  right  for  right's 
sake.  They  think  so  much  of  the  right  that 
they  are  not  willing  that  the  universe  should 
be  such  a  universe  as  to  make  morality  only 
the  affair  of  fleeting  mortals.  Man  must  be 
free  so  as  to  be  capable  of  real  morality.  Im- 

232 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

mortality  must  give  scope  for  morality.  At  the 
center  must  be  a  God  who  is  himself  bound  by 
the  demands  of  the  moral  law.  Right  for 
right's  own  sake  may  become  rather  empty 
unless  we  are  in  a  universe  where  we  can  say 
at  least  something  of  man  for  man's  own  sake 
and  worship  God  for  God's  own  sake.  Upon 
our  doctrine  of  man  and  God  our  ethics  will 
in  the  end  depend  for  its  force. 

The  ethical  demand  for  Christ,  therefore,  is 
the  demand  for  a  moral  dynamic.  That 
dynamic  is  found  in  the  doctrine  of  man  and 
the  doctrine  of  God.  On  Christ's  teaching  that 
the  deep  human  claims  have  the  right  of  way 
we  need  not  dwell.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
in  his  view  the  deep  and  base  sins  are  sins 
against  the  ideal  of  humanity.  Even  an  insti- 
tution which  his  contemporaries  regarded  as 
transcendently  sacred  had  to  meet  his  declara- 
tion that  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man  and 
not  man  for  the  Sabbath.  Even  more  force- 
ful, however,  has  been  the  demand  for  Christ 
because  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  God.  The 
struggle  for  moral  life  in  this  world  is  so  in- 
tense, the  inducements  to  quit  the  struggle  are 
so  many,  the  sense  of  failure  is  at  times  so 
overwhelming  that  the  soul  cries  out  asJdng 
whether  there  is  a  moral  God  or  not,  and  if 


THE    INCKEASE    OF    FAITH 

there  is,  can  we  think  of  him  as  interested  in 
our  battle?  The  moral  battlefield  is  a  grim 
place.  Where  is  God  and  what  is  he  doing? 
Is  he  contemplating  the  scene  from  afar  or  is 
he  at  hand?  Is  he  the  God  of  the  scientist 
merely,  most  interested  in  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion, or  is  he  interested  in  moral  law?  The 
answer  of  Jesus  is  clear.  God  is  at  hand.  He 
is  more  truly  in  the  moral  struggle  than  we 
can  be  ourselves.  Our  success  or  failure  means 
more  to  him  than  to  us.  Obligations  are  more 
truly  binding  upon  him  than  on  us.  When  we 
enter  the  really  moral  life  we  come  close  to 
him,  and  the  more  moral  we  become  the  more 
we  become  like  him.  The  pure  in  heart  see 
God.  The  seeker  after  morality  seeks  the  real 
kingdom.  He  lives  among  the  real  persons. 
He  attains  to  the  real  life.  No  matter  what 
the  appearance  may  be,  the  real  universe  is 
moral.  Moral  law  is  constitutional.  When  a 
man  sets  his  will  to  do  right,  the  stars  and  the 
God  who  made  the  stars  are  fighting  for  him. 

There  is  another  factor  in  the  power  which 
Christ  contributes  to  men  engaged  in  the 
struggle  for  moral  life.  We  have  spoken  of 
the  sense  of  failure  which  attends  the  moral 
struggle.  We  arise  in  the  morning  and  think 
that  we  shall  reach  our  moral  ideal  by  sunset, 

234 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

but  at  sunset  the  ideal  mocks  us  from  the  dis- 
tance. Conscience  lays  upon  us  tasks  which 
we  feel  we  can  never  discharge.  In  addition 
to  this  we  have  lapses  which  burden  us  with  a 
consciousness  of  personal  guilt.  We  cry  out 
for  forgiveness  and  for  a  second  chance,  and 
for  a  third,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  Here  the 
Christian  revelation  comes  in  again  to  help  us. 
The  cross  of  Christ  sets  on  high  a  holiness  and 
love  which  reestablish  and  reenforce  us.  In  the 
name  of  a  holiness  which  we  can  never  reach, 
but  which  wre  would  reach  if  we  could,  we  seek 
for  forgiveness ;  and  in  the  name  of  a  love  for 
which  we  can  find  no  adequate  expression  we 
go  forth  again  to  the  battle.  We  grieve  over 
our  blunders,  but  rest  in  the  consolation  that 
the  God  of  moral  love,  after  all,  takes  our  in- 
tention for  the  deed.  So  if  we  fall,  we  rise 
again.  We  are  poor  travelers,  but  we  get 
ahead.  Now,  the  present  writer  is  not  espe- 
cially concerned  as  to  the  theological  terms  in 
which  the  Holy  love  of  God  as  set  forth  in  the 
cross  of  Christ  is  stated,  but  we  must  not  lose 
sight  of  the  significance  of  the  fact  itself  as  a 
center  of  moral  power.  Right  for  right's  own 
sake,  with  no  thought  of  aid  from  religious  con- 
ceptions, may  suffice  in  ordinary  and  comfort- 
able circumstances,  but  is  apt  to  lack  power 

235 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

when  deadly  temptation  appears.  And  when 
we  are  dealing  with  the  man  who  is  down,  the 
bare  contemplation  of  moral  precepts,  no  mat- 
ter how  correct  these  may  be,  is  hardly  enough 
to  get  him  again  upon  his  feet. 

We  have  said  before  that  the  great  word  in 
all  our  thought  of  man's  mastery  of  the  forces 
of  the  universe  is  the  word  "control."  Now 
control  is  not  a  making  over  of  a  force  or  a 
turning  it  back  upon  itself.  Control  recog- 
nizes the  force  and  then  seeks  to  utilize 
it.  Control  is  the  rudder  of  the  ship.  The 
emphasis  upon  control  would  seem  to  be 
an  essentially  Christian  conception.  Chris- 
tianity looks  upon  the  vast  forces  as  in  a  sense 
sacred — sacred,  at  least,  as  presenting  a  divine 
opportunity.  Forces  in  ourselves  are  sacred 
in  the  sense  that  they  can  be  given  a  divine 
direction.  We  are  not  to  try  to  make  our- 
selves something  other  than  we  are,  or  to  turn 
our  streaming  forces  back  upon  themselves. 
We  are  to  accept  ourselves  as  what  we  are  and 
then  to  direct  our  lives  aright.  So  with  the 
social  and  all  other  forces.  Rudders  are  to  be 
put  into  them.  They  are  not  to  be  condemned 
and  halted.  They  are  not  to  be  allowed  to 
drift.  They  are  to  be  steered  to  a  goal. 

The  truth  of  the  Christian  system  as  aiming 

236 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

at  control  in  this  sense  is  being  more  and  more 
recognized,  and  is  creating  renewed  demand 
for  Christianity.  There  have  been  Christians 
who  have  declared  that  all  the  forces  in  this 
world,  both  inside  ourselves  and  outside,  are 
to  be  resisted  as  of  the  devil.  The  aim  of  these 
disciples  has  usually  been  good,  but  their 
method  has  not  always  been  wise.  Worldliness 
is  of  the  inner  spirit.  The  man  who  has  least  of 
worldly  power  may  be  most  worldly  in  spirit, 
and  the  man  who  has  most  of  worldly  power 
may  be  unworldly  in  aim.  Other  Christians 
have  declared  that  this  world  and  its  forces 
are  to  be  allowed  to  drift  whither  they  will, 
that  they  have  little  meaning  for  the  kingdom 
of  God.  The  true  Christian  conception  would 
seem  to  be  that  the  forces  are  to  be  neither 
resisted  nor  allowed  to  drift,  but  to  be  con- 
trolled. Hence  the  feeling  both  inside  the 
Church  and  outside  is  that  we  must  look  to 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  for  an  understanding  of 
the  forces  and  to  his  spirit  for  a  power  which 
will  control  the  forces. 

We  do  not  mean  that  there  is  any  demand 
to-day  for  a  slavish  imitation  of  Christ.  Per- 
haps we  would  do  better  not  to  use  the  word 
"imitation"  at  all.  There  is  demand  for  ap- 
propriation of  the  teaching  and  spirit  of 

237 


THE    INCREASE    OF    FAITH 

Christ.  But  appropriation  means  not  me- 
chanical imitation,  but  absorption  and  assimi- 
lation. The  way  of  advance  lies  not  through 
attempt  to  make  a  detailed  code  of  ethics  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  valid  for  all  times,  but 
through  working  Christ's  thought  of  God  and 
of  man  and  of  life  into  the  life  of  to-day.  And 
the  spirit  of  Christ,  while  it  cannot  be  de- 
scribed, is  readily  discernible.  With  that  spirit 
we  can  contrive  to  get  along  with  imperfectly 
working  institutions  or  forces;  and  without 
that  spirit  we  are  helpless,  no  matter  how 
worthy  the  institution  or  force  in  itself.  In 
our  relation  to  the  great  natural  forces  our 
question  is  as  to  who  is  running  the  machines 
and  with  what  spirit.  The  answer  of  Chris- 
tianity is  that  God  is  the  center  and  source  of 
the  forces,  and  that  he  is  using  them  with  the 
spirit  that  is  revealed  in  Christ.  In  regard 
to  all  forces  which  can  be  brought  under  hu- 
man control,  the  function  of  Christianity  is  to 
animate  these  forces  with  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  phenomena  in 
history  is  the  fact  of  what  might  be  called  the 
repeated  return  of  Christ.  After  all  attempts 
to  explain  him  away,  Christ  returns  to  the 
thinking  of  men,  and  returns  more  powerful 
than  before.  We  say  that  this  is  because  of 

238 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  CHRIST 

his  ability  to  minister  to  the  deeper  needs  of 
men.  Those  needs  become  urgent  and  clam- 
orous and  make  demands  upon  thought  sys- 
tems which  only  the  teachings  of  Christ  can 
satisfy  and  demands  upon  heart  and  will- 
forces  which  only  the  spirit  of  Christ  can  meet. 
It  is  part  of  the  glory  of  our  time  that  the 
Church  of  to-day  is  making  everything  turn 
around  the  thought  and  spirit  of  Christ.  In 
her  thought  of  the  Scriptures,  and  of  religious 
experience,  and  in  her  thought  of  herself  as  an 
instrument,  the  question  which  the  Church 
raises  is  as  to  how  to  beget  in  men  the  spirit  of 
Christ.  Raising  the  question  does  not  answer 
it,  of  course,  but  the  future  of  the  Church  is 
never  brighter  than  in  the  days  when  she 
clearly  discerns  the  demand  of  the  individual 
and  of  society  for  the  spirit  which  is  in  Christ. 


239 


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